The Crane Wife
by shooting-stetsons
Summary: Salander packs up and starts anew in London. She does not plan on finding salvation in John Watson or the false name Mary Morstan. Then again, these things never go as planned for her anymore.  Post-Reichenbach, AU from Mill Book2
1. Chapter 1

**Hello, all! Yes, this is the reason why Frailty hasn't been updated yet. Sorry. Hopefully this sort of makes up for it?**

The title is taken very liberally from the song "The Crane Wife 3" by The Decemberists.

Also, please forgive me for not knowing major details in the wake of The Girl Who Played with Fire. I finished it and had this idea and started before I could get my overeager hands on a copy of The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet's Nest; therefore, from the end of TGWPwF, this is completely AU.

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><p>On her first night out since moving to London, walking back to her motel room, Salander was nearly attacked by a couple of thugs. She was annoyed, but by now not entirely surprised as she noted the two drunk men following her from the pub where she'd had her dinner. Just as short and skinny as ever, but Salander was still recovering from her stint in the hospital and knew that under these circumstances she would not be able to fight them off if they were coordinated through the stupor of alcohol. She herself had abstained from drink only because it would interfere with the pain medication she was still taking. It left her feeling slow and stupid, but she was still a freak with sharp senses and prompt wits. She closed thin fingers around the taser in the front pocket of her shoulder bag and waited as she walked.<p>

A man across the street, shorter than the two following her but still well taller than her, glanced back at the drunk idiots, looked both ways, then briskly crossed the street. "Er, Mary, is that you?" he asked, false smile looking artificially stretched in the fading twilight. Salander stared at him and squeezed her taser's handle in anticipation, wondering what he was playing at.

He raised his eyebrows and nodded pointedly at the two drunk men who were now picking up speed. "It's me, John, _remember?_" he prompted.

As she eyed him suspiciously one of the men staggered forward. "Honey, is this bastard bothering you?" he slurred, reaching for her shoulder. The short man tried to intervene, like she was some helpless kid. She elbowed him in the sternum and jabbed the tall drunk in the neck with the taser. He screamed in pain and fell like a stone, but instead of retreating his companion came charging like a bull. The man Salander elbowed was still catching his breath, so she ducked the bull's outstretched arm and let the two collide in a groaning heap. The bull started to get up and she tased him when he was clear of the one she'd elbowed, not out of guilt or pity for the shorter man, but because she wanted as much voltage to go into the bull as possible rather than following the current of bodies into the ground. The bull collapsed on top of the short man, and as he fought to wriggle free Salander took off, tripping over the short man's fallen shoulder bag, and accidentally kicking a can of yellow spray-paint onto the pavement before she vanished from sight.

She ran all the way to her motel, then drew herself a hot bath and made a cup of tea - must get used to the local fares - before crawling into bed and falling almost instantly asleep.

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><p>It was another four days before Salander decided to look for a flat of her own. It wasn't as though she couldn't afford to live in the motel with what was left of Wennerström's billions, but she needed to lay low as best as possible, probably assume a new identity altogether since Irene Nesser was now useless. The wig, however, was still a good idea.<p>

As she ate breakfast and searched the newspaper for open flats, she began building a new identity for herself. The man last night had called her Mary. It was a good name, and there was a woman in the motel with the name who looked similar to Irene Nesser. She would have to change the passport photograph if she kept the Nesser chain going any longer. After about ten minutes she found an ad for a basement flat on Baker Street, a good location according to the ad, but the flat itself had a mold problem. It was small, but furnished by the landlady. The perfect conditions for an average single woman.

She pulled on the Nesser wig and put on some carefully neutral makeup. She didn't want to look glamorous to see to an average-to-dumpy flat.

It was raining outside when she finished her makeup and pulled on a dark jacket. Before taking off she went down to the motel cafe and found Mary-who-looked-like-Nesser drinking a black Colombian coffee. Salander ordered a caffe latte and drank it two seats away at the bar. When Mary was pulling on her jacket to leave, Salander reached into her purse and pulled out her passport, sticking it up her sleeve just before Mary turned back around. She waited until Mary had gone back to her room before packing up and leaving the cafe for Baker Street. It wasn't far, so Salander walked and enjoyed the fresh air. On the way she saw a wall graffitied with the words "I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES." Even though she didn't care she remembered the message, another disadvantage of her defect.

The landlady was very kind and more than eager to show her the basement flat, gripping the riling tight to protect herself from falling on a bad hip. "Now, I put in the ad that there's a spot of mold, you know," she reminded Salander as she let her in. The flat was small, and dark, and smelled of mildew, but for Salander's purposes it was perfect.

"Who lives upstairs?" she asked in her Oxford accent, nodding at the ceiling.

Mrs. Hudson made a deploring face. "Well, I'm sure you've heard the story in the papers, dear, but I've been trying to keep it quiet. Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson used to live up there."

She blinked, realizing that if she was to pretend to be an inhabitant of London she ought to know about this. "I'm afraid I've been out of the country for a while," she smoothly explained, "for my health. Could you explain?"

For a moment she thought the old woman was going to burst into tears right there, but instead the old woman invited Salander up into her flat and made tea before explaining Sherlock Holmes' rise to fame over the past year and a half, the accusations of fraud against him, and his subsequent suicide over two months ago. "Poor Doctor Watson just couldn't bear to live here any longer. He says he might still come back, it's all paid for by Sherlock's brother, but right now the memories are just too much, the poor dear."

Salander certainly had no interest in some middle-aged man crying over his dead boyfriend. She did, however, take the flat to maintain the idea that she needed a place very badly. And after a few minutes' careful evaluation she confessed to the wig but did not remove it. Let the old woman think what she wanted about what was underneath.

It took only a few hours to get all of Salander's few possessions from the motel to her new flat. She'd left Sweden in a rush, and was unable to bring anything that could possibly identify her, even if it was doubtful that anyone in London would be paying attention to the news from Stockholm. She stopped at a nearby Tesco to get food and toiletries, and then spent the rest of the day scraping mold off the bathroom walls as best she could with her limited strength. Salander was not supposed to be in London, especially not so soon after leaving the hospital. She was meant to be convalescing in the countryside, but the moment her guardian nurse had been sufficiently distracted it was like instinct took over and she ran. The nurse had been unbearable, all "Fröken Salander," this and that, when Salander knew what her innermost thoughts were of how to let Salander die without being accused of negligence. Were she in Sweden now, she would only be standing trial for three murders and manslaughter.

The old lady invited Mary Morstan upstairs for tea. She declined. Then the old lady invited Mary upstairs for dinner. She declined that also. Even the most minor of niceties no longer interested her.

By the time her flat was arranged as best it could be with only one room and a bathroom, Salander was more exhausted than she'd ever felt before. She stripped off her clothes and, as custom every night since she was able, stood in front of the mirror. She still looked anorexic, though it was even worse than it had been and she had lost significant muscle-mass in the hospital. Her breasts were still intact only because they were implants. Her hair was the shortest it had ever been, only three-quarters of an inch in places, and had returned to its original color of rust-red, which it hadn't been since Salander was fifteen and dyed it black for the first time. She looked like she had cancer. Her skin was dull and yellowish with fever from antibiotics that still came and went. The scars on her shoulder and hip were an ugly bright red. The Chinese character tattoo had been destroyed. All of her piercings had been removed and were healing over. She looked ordinary. Sick and ordinary. She drank a cup of hot black tea before crawling into bed, and fell asleep as soon as the lamp was out.

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><p>Two weeks passed and Salander picked up a routine of sorts. Every morning she woke up and had coffee, filling the whole flat with the aroma, and ate her breakfast to the sounds of the old lady's television. Then she ate a few pills and went back to bed until the afternoon. She didn't want to sleep so much, but her pills made her tired and she was still recovering from fucking Zalachenko trying to kill her and couldn't help it when the fatigue rolled in. The old lady probably thought she was some lazy idiot by now, and was worrying about rent. But Salander still had plenty of money, even if she now had to use a dealer to get her pain medication because Mary Morstan obviously didn't have a bullet hole in her head. She woke up sometime in the early afternoon and made an appearance for the landlady's sake before going for a walk or getting something to eat at a cafe, then went back to her flat and worked on her new laptop computer. She ate more pills before dinner, took a bath, and then went to sleep. It was a mindless way to live, but at least she was alive.<p>

Salander had nightmares about Zalachenko and Niedermann. Always, Niedermann was an indestructible robot and Zalachenko was shooting her again and again but she wouldn't die. She woke up screaming more than once, only to make her head hurt so much she was blinded.

After two weeks and four days she overheard the old lady on the phone with her old tenant, Doctor Watson. She wanted him to come by and meet Mary, and try to see if she was anorexic. The old woman was worried about her. Salander had not expected to feel guilt for causing concern, but her new landlady was kind and left her alone when she wanted to be by herself, yet still somehow leaving the offer of tea and company open.

It should not have been a surprise when Salander picked up her drugs from a seedy man in a seedy pub that they were laced with something stronger and more dangerous, but Salander was not exactly in her full faculties. Instead she went home, ate three pills with her antibiotics, and crawled into bed. When she woke up the next morning it was as though she had been shot all over again. She couldn't coordinate, couldn't think or plan beyond the next four seconds, and every muscle screamed in protest when she moved. She didn't even know what had woken her until she heard the old lady knocking on the door and calling for Mary. The clock said it was past eleven in the morning. Salander rolled and fell out of bed, letting out a stifled moan when she landed on her bad hip.

"Mary, are you all right down there?" the old lady called.

Salander tried to shout up the stairs for her to go away, that she was fine, but all the came out of her mouth was a strangled yell. There were two loud bangs and then her door crashed open. She tried to cover herself up, she was only in her underwear and her scars were hideous, but she couldn't see the blankets or grip them in her shaking hands. Heavier footfalls than the old lady's were coming down the stairs, and too late Salander realized that it was probably that Doctor Watson the old lady was going on about.

"Take it easy," a voice said above her, echoing painfully around her fractured skull as calloused hands gently took her shoulders. "I'm going to get you back up into bed, okay Mary? My name's John, I'm a doctor."

She wanted to yell at him to just get on with it, but he obviously didn't know any better as he helped her up onto her bed and then took her pulse. Her vision finally focused and she could observe that he was not, in fact, looking at her body. Of course, she didn't know why he would when she was so hideous. He was, however, the same John whom she had elbowed in the sternum two weeks before. He probably didn't recognize her, but the possibility was enough to make Salander's heart race. Watson's eyes flickered down to her, and she realized he was still checking her pulse.

After another moment he gently pulled up the top lid of each of her eyes and peered into them, looking for a reaction without a suitable light to shine in. "Just a bit hungover?" he asked sympathetically. He kept his eyes trained on her face, didn't look at her body, didn't see the scars. She nodded, waiting for the catch. "What did you take?" She stared at him long and hard, trying to muster up a menacing glare of the same calibre as before Zalachenko tried to kill her. The new skeletal structure of her face probably contributed, because Watson leaned coolly away. "Fine. I can't look through your things without asking you to call Scotland Yard on me, but let me tell you something: that woman upstairs does not deserve any more grief in her life. I'm not coming back to live here for a good long while, if at all, but I'll be coming by to check in on you from time to time. I want you cleaned up, and if you don't get your act together I have a few friends at the Yard who will be interested in your case, understood?"

It was just like Teleborian all over again. Just another fucking do-gooder like Blomkvist and Armansky trying to control her. She didn't give him the satisfaction, and instead stared with such hatred shining from her eyes that he seemed to get the message. He left, not with his tail between his legs but close, and Salander stared enraged at the door long after he had gone. That night Salander granted her dealer a visit and procured unlaced pain medication.


	2. Chapter 2

**NOTE: This story was finished as of today. So hopefully I'll be getting back on track with Frailty now that all of my post-Reichenbach feels have had a place to go.**** thank you all for your kindness and patience. As ever, I do not have a beta so please forgive my mortal mistakes. Much love to all of you.  
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><p>John Watson kept good on his promise to continue dropping by. He never stayed more than the time necessary to check on the old lady and Salander, and every time Salander caught him in the foyer it was with his eyes cast up toward the other flat, eyes distant and unspeakably sad. After four incidences such as this Salander was so annoyed she finally moaned, "Oh, just go up there for God's sake!"<p>

Dark blue eyes rounded on her with narrowed suspicion. "Sorry?"

Feeling her frustration rising, Mary Morstan shouldered past Watson and took the stairs up to 221B two at a time and tried the knob, which of course was locked. She pulled a pin from her pocket and started picking away at the lock until Watson grabbed her shoulder and pulled her back. "Cut it out!"

"Well, if no one's going to live in there I figure I at least could!" she shot back.

After two months of politely keeping his distance and schooling himself with irritating care, Watson was angry. He swung her around until their noses were inches apart. "Stop it," he said in a dangerously quiet voice. "Stop it _now_." Shit, he was mad, and that somehow transformed him from the morose old doctor in an ugly jumper to the soldier that Salander could see underneath. Every line in his face deepened and grew sharper, at least until he realized he had pinned Mary to the wall. He fell away with a pained grimace, shoulder bag slipping to the floor with a metallic clang. A can of spray paint rolled out, but Mary was already slinking back down the stairs, almost feeling a bit disappointed that his rage had dissipated so quickly and quietly.

Halfway down the steps to 221C, she heard the upstairs flat open up with a slow creak, and she smiled a crooked smile to herself.

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><p>Salander started taking long walks around the city without medication, despite the pain in her hip, while squeezing a stress-ball to regain a bit of strength in her shoulder and hip. The exercise made her days feel three times as long and her body hurt in ways that should only be brought on by rigorous sex, but she was getting stronger and that was an advantage. She had also purchased a deck of flash cards for foreigners learning English, because her head injury had left gaps in her knowledge and she sometimes forgot words for certain objects no matter what language she was trying to speak. As she wandered the streets she caught sight of more graffiti like the day she'd moved into 221 Baker Street.<p>

I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES.

On her fourth day of such rigorous exercise she came home, sweaty and aching with more of a limp than usual from exhaustion, to find Watson looking annoyingly well-put-together in the foyer. He surveyed her with a doctor's critical eye. "All right, Mary?"

"Fuck off," she panted, hissing as she raised her hand to unlock the door. For several moments she had to merely contemplate the stairs before gritting her teeth and reaching for the handrail. Her palm was slick with sweat, and she nearly slipped twice before sensing Watson hovering at the top of the stairs. "I said. Fuck. _Off_."

Watson sighed but did not relent. "I wanted to ask you something," he said, following her down the stairs and taking her free arm. It was not supporting her weight fully, still making her do most of the work, but the danger of falling had all but abated. "It's Mrs. Hudson's birthday. I'm taking her out to dinner, and was wondering if you wanted to join us. I'm buying for everyone."

For several seconds all Mary could do was stare aghast at Watson. Her first instinct was to say no and push him the rest of the way down the stairs, but that was Salander talking. She was Mary Morstan now, who she had decided used to be a librarian until getting in a car accident and losing her position after too much sick leave. Mary Morstan could use a few free meals, even if Salander could afford to eat for the rest of her life.

"I need to shower and change," she said. Watson almost looked surprised, but nodded and quickly turned back to the stairs to allow her privacy. "I'll be fifteen minutes."

In reality it took twenty, only because she was still so sore, but the hot water helped greatly and she'd been reluctant to step out of the spray. The weather was changing, and her injuries were finely tuned to that change. She had headaches nearly all the time unless she ate a handful of pills intermittently throughout the day, and found herself limping more than even when she'd left the hospital. Her entire left side, really, was completely useless. She put on the Nesser wig before setting out, only so people wouldn't stare at her slapdash hair. Watson and the old lady gave her a funny look when she stumped up the stairs, but didn't ask about it and she wouldn't have told them anyway.

They went to some Italian place Salander hadn't tried yet called Angelo's. Watson seemed to know the man very well, and they brought out a cake for the old lady. Salander hadn't expected to have a good time, but Watson didn't condescend to her the way he did when they met, treated her like a normal person, even startled her into laughter a few times when retelling stories of his army days. Angelo himself was kind, and Mrs. Hudson modestly joyful to the point of making Salander feel guilty that she had not gotten her anything. She would have to pick something up in the next day or so on her walks.

Watson started coming by more often after Mrs. Hudson's birthday, both for visits at teatime and to venture up into his old flat. Salander tried not to be too interested in his affairs only because she didn't want him to be interested in hers in return, but every time the stairs creaked she found herself perking up slightly, no matter what she was doing. Watson's person was attractive, in a way, rather like Blomkvist had been. After his initial suspicion in her had faded, Watson left her to her own devices and no longer seemed to think she was a junkie. It helped that she had found a more trustworthy dealer for her pain medications and no longer had accidental overdoses or bad trips. He spoke to her like an equal rather than a freak of nature, and she appreciated it in the same skeptical way she had Blomkvist. He wasn't entirely good-looking, but neither had Blomkvist been, and Salander wasn't interested in good looks when she herself was so unattractive. She didn't want to like him, in fact tried as hard as she could to continue hating him as she had the first day he'd crashed into her flat, but the more he came around the more she found herself leaving her door ajar and playing music she knew he liked from a bit of snooping in his computer.

Salander knew, however, that she was falling for another fucking do-gooder when someone tried to break into 221B. She had woken up in the middle of her usual nightmare rather than the usual moment, after Zalachenko had shot her, to the sound of floorboards creaking. It was too late in the night for Watson to be visiting, so she got up, pulled a sweater on over her bra, and padded silently to the closet where she kept a cricket bat she'd bought shortly after moving in. Up the stairs she went, skipping the ones that groaned under her, bat at the ready. She could hear them whispering about Holmes, the detective who used to live there, giving his place what it really deserved, and Salander felt a shot of anger. The man was already dead; there was no reason to destroy the old lady's property just because they had a problem with him.

"Get out," she demanded, intercepting them from behind before they could get all the way up the stairs to 221B. They were a man and woman, younger than her but not by much, tall and lithe and swathed in black. They laughed when they saw her, probably thinking her to be the old lady's teenage granddaughter. "I said _get out_."

The man took two steps down toward her. "And what are you gonna do about it?" he asked, grabbing the cricket bat and trying to twist it out of her hands. Her shoulder wrenched painfully but she kept hold, and used the momentum to hook her elbow over the bat and propel the man down the stairs. The woman shrieked and instantly threw up her hands in a plea for mercy as the lights flew on in Mrs. Hudson's flat. The man was a groaning heap at the bottom of the stairs, and Salander repositioned herself over him with the bat pressed to his chest, pinning him down.

"If you ever come back to this house I will kill you," she said. "Tell anyone else who thinks it's funny to fuck around in a dead man's underwear drawer."

It was at that moment that Mrs. Hudson tottered out of her flat, half-asleep still but ready for trouble. "What have you boys...?" she murmured sleepily, then started at the sight before her. "Oh. I'll just call DI Lestrade. You keep them there, dear." She went back into her flat to get her mobile, and Salander did as she was told, even if she didn't want to talk to the police. Mrs. Hudson made two phone calls with the same message, and five minutes later Watson was running breathlessly through the front door fully clothed with spots of yellow paint on his fingertips and jacket sleeves.

"What happened?" he demanded, eyes boggling at the sight of Mary in her panties and a sweater, pinning a burglar down with a cricket bat, while the accomplice cowered halfway up the stairs. "What the hell are _you_ doing here? Mary?"

She looked up from where she'd been keeping a steady glare on the man's bloody face, but was too worked up to explain herself. Mrs. Hudson, now in a dressing gown and slippers, came back into the front hall and told John all she had seen. The moment the salt-and-pepper-haired DI Lestrade came in the female burglar was screaming that Mary had assaulted them, that they were lost and asking for directions and Mary had mindlessly attacked. Salander knitted her mouth shut and prepared for what would have inevitably come next were she back in Stockholm, though did think to pull the cricket bat away from the man's chest and let him sit up.

It was obvious that Lestrade was suspicious of her as long as the female burglar was shrieking her head off, especially when everyone in the front hall had a clear view of her panties, the Chinese tattoo on her hip that had been mangled by an obvious bullet-wound, and her general drug-addict-slash-cancer-patient appearance. Then the unthinkable happened:

"It's okay, Lestrade," Watson assured the DI. "I was...I was here, staying the night, upstairs. I heard them coming, and was about to come out when Mary intervened before I got the chance. They were here to break in and cause as much damage as possible; Mary was only looking out for me and Mrs. Hudson."

More words were exchanged, but in the wake of Watson selflessly coming to her defense she fell back against the wall, and leaned there helplessly as the DI arrested the burglars and escorted them out to his car. Watson smiled at her with amusement evident in his dark blue eyes. "I can't believe skinny little you managed to keep two burglars subdued in the time it took Mrs. Hudson to wake up and me to get here. Good on you, Mary."

She tried to open her mouth and say something clever, but found that she was shaking too much in the wake of believing her jig was up. For moments she had been convinced that she would be arrested, found out as the real Mary Morstan's impersonator, and deported back to Sweden to be locked away forever. Watson and the old lady seemed under the impression that she was in shock. They ushered her into 221C, and the old lady wrapped a thick knitted blanket around her shoulders while Watson bustled around the kitchen making tea. She tried several more times to explain her justification for throwing the man down the stairs, but Watson seemed to understand well enough without. He tried to hold her hand, to assure her everything would be all right, but she jerked away from his touch.

"Well, I'll definitely be staying nights more often," he decided once they all had finished their tea at four in the morning. Salander's nerves had calmed down significantly enough for her to feel a spike of indignation. She'd managed well enough on her own, but supposed she wouldn't be able to keep a low profile if she continued savaging all intruders. With a frustrated sigh Mary ran her fingers through her scrubby short hair, wincing when she managed to hit the crater behind her left ear despite trying as hard as she could to avoid it.

Watson tried to discreetly look at the scar on her left hip, and when Mary saw him looking moved the blanket aside so he could get a better view. There was no point hiding it now that God and everyone had seen. He blushed but didn't look away once he'd been caught in the act, obviously identified the scar as a gunshot wound, nodded curtly, and turned his gaze toward the fireplace. Mary went to bed shortly after with the feelings of crawling bugs under her skin. He was getting too close.


	3. Chapter 3

Weeks flew by and her hair grew fractionally longer in the inconsistent serenity of Salander's Baker Street flat. Watson started staying nights but spending much of the daylight hours away from his old digs. Mary was more understanding of his grief than Salander, and Lisbeth found herself slipping into those secondhand shoes more often, whether Watson was around or not. She found that after a long enough time she quite liked being Mary; Mary Morstan had more patience and understanding than Salander, and even if she did have a temper that couldn't be changed no matter how she tried, Mary had a kindness to her that Salander's past had stolen away. In London she had no past to haunt her.

She knew the six-month anniversary of Sherlock Holmes' death was looming at the same time that she learned indefinitely that Watson was one of the main players putting up the "I BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES" graffiti she saw nearly daily on her walks. The shade of yellow coincided perfectly with the spots she always found in places Watson tried to hide: under his fingernails, in the wrinkled spot on his outer elbow, once even dusted across his eyelashes. She had thought that his quick appearance the night of the burglary had been because he was staying nearby, but the next week he'd mentioned staying with his sister on the other side of town, and he had already been dressed - in all black - that night.

Salander spent an entire day researching the rise and fall of Sherlock Holmes, smiling crookedly at Watson's romantic blog entries and carefully storing away the information on Holmes' website in case she needed it someday. She read the police and news reports following his death with a scowl; how quickly the media changed their allegiance once the waters grew murky. She knew that much firsthand, though to be fair the media had never been on her side in the first place. She was always just a defect.

Still, even if Holmes' death had been in an unfavorable light, there were still people who believed in him and that he was real. It was a whole movement of rebellious youths and graffiti artists across the brickwork of London and the internet. Once she knew what she was looking for, there were signs of the movement in almost every forum Salander knew. Someone had even developed a benevolent computer virus, where all it did was open the basic Paint program and draw in yellow a smiling face and the words "JohnWatsonBlog .co .uk Was NOT A Work Of Fiction!" that would erase themselves to be replaced with other messages such as "Moriarty was REAL!", "Rich Brook is a SHAM!", and last, "BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK." She wanted to do something for Watson, but didn't know what he would notice or deem appropriate. In the end she looked up a few instructional videos on YouTube and emailed a young man named Raz for pointers before her mind was made up.

Watson stayed in Baker Street the night before the anniversary, but left very early in the morning, as was his custom. He wouldn't be back until the twilight hours, so once he had set off Salander was on the move. It was going to be more difficult to pull off in the daylight, but she was prepared and her hip was feeling much better.

She left a can of yellow spray paint just inside the door to 221B with a note that read "Follow me." As Salander walked to her destination she left arrows painted on the walls, each one in plain view of the arrow before it, until she reached her destination. It was in a rare CCTV blind spot off of 8th street, a decent trek away from Baker Street but not too far for Watson to believe it a practical joke. She opened her bag and set to work, only stopping to pull the handkerchief off of her face and take a drink of water or eat a snack around midday. It wouldn't be perfect, far from it really, but the message was enough to sustain her through the day of labor.

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><p>What Salander had not anticipated was that on the anniversary of his friend's death, John did not intend to be out until nightfall. He spent some time with his sister, took flowers to the cemetery, visited Sherlock's brother at work, stopped at Bart's for a chat when he heard that Molly Hooper was in town for a few days (had fled to the country after Sherlock's death to escape the memories of her unrequited love), and was back at Baker Street by late-afternoon. He opened the door to his flat and kicked over a can of spray paint. Frowning because he knew he hadn't left his supplies lying around, John picked it up, saw the note, and felt his heart begin to race. He knew that there were others out there spreading the message, but for one of them to try to lure him into the open? Was this some sort of trap?<p>

Still, it wasn't as though John didn't know how to protect himself, and if he were about to be cornered by the media or the police he had already developed a battle strategy against them. ASBOs be damned, he would continue spreading the word of Sherlock's innocence until his last breath. He refastened the zipper on his jacket and retreated back into the swell of people returning home from work. Right across the street from 221B was a yellow arrow painted on the wall, pointing to the right, obviously for him to follow. So follow he did.

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><p>Salander was just beginning to add the final touches to her masterpiece when she heard the approaching footsteps. It was not the first time that day for someone to interrupt her, but usually after some choice Swedish phrases they backed off. She continued spraying the wall without a care until the footfalls stopped. Then she called, "<em>Bite my ass!<em>" in Swedish at whoever was watching, only noticing that they didn't move from their place some ten feet away.

"_Mary_, is that you?"

The paint can fell from her cramped hand with a clatter. She turned her head and saw that Watson must have gotten home early, or else happened to be passing by to see her working. Her intention had never been for him to see her in the act, but to see the message and no messenger, and so the very first reaction that sprung to mind was _run you fool, run!_Skidding on her heels, Mary sprinted for the other end of the alley, leaving the portrait of Holmes in aubergine and blue to go unfinished, but the words "WATSON! DO NOT LOSE HEART!" continued to burn the backs of her eyes even as the bright spectrum of colors was replaced by the city's dull gray.

Watson was not only taller but faster than her, and caught up before she could even reach the mouth of the alley. With her arms in his hands (though showing extra care for her left side) she was pulled back and cornered against the wall. Though still short for a man he loomed over her just as anyone did, but there was no trace of hostility on his battle-weary face. Instead his jaw was slack with shock, eyes shining and pulse quick in his throat. He tried several times to speak and only succeeded on the third attempt. "You... I mean... Thought you hated me, Mary."

Mary Morstan was coated from head to toe in multiple colors and stunk of pain fumes. Her skin was sticky with sweat despite the bite in the winter air and her growing hair akimbo. She didn't have to reply for him to put the pieces together from her appearance alone. After a moment's hesitation he brought a trembling hand from her shoulder to her cheekbone, then ducked his head and kissed her softly, a whisper of thanks against her lips. When he began to draw away she looped her stiff arms around his neck and pulled him back down.

They nearly didn't make it back to Baker Street.

* * *

><p>Being in love with Mary Morstan was like trying to approach a wild animal, John mused as he watched rays of sunlight dance across the scales of her dragon tattoo, or perhaps a slow burn. They were sprawled in bed on a Sunday morning; it had been four weeks since the Wall. Drawing this strange and wild woman out of her shell was proving even more difficult than it had been with Sherlock Holmes as a best friend. She told no tales of her childhood nor recollections of her parents besides telling him that they had died within a year of one another. She would not reveal how she had got her many scars, though encouraged him to lavish them with attention in bed. She wore a blonde wig in public and played with her breasts in the mirror as though in a constant state of surprise over them. John watched carefully and took metaphorical notes, but made sure not to be too hasty with his curiosity or it would set them back several milestones.<p>

And yet he did manage to draw her out. Gently, like in biology class when they dissected fragile flowers, he managed to open up the folds of Mary Morstan's heart, and god, he loved her with a fire that could only be brought on by his addiction to danger. She was a whisper in a darkened side-street, a loaded gun with no safety setting, a breath of poisonous gas underwater. In so many ways John was reminded of his lost friend when he watched Mary sit down and think for hours, but in several other ways they were polar opposites. Sherlock Holmes did not believe in love; Mary Morstan merely fought tooth and nail not to experience the misfortune of falling.

She had fought hard, it seemed, and was exhausted by the long battle.

John glanced at the clock - 9.15 - and gently buried his nose in Mary's short red hair before taking a deep breath in. It was only when she squirmed, ticklish in the oddest way, that he felt the puckered scar tissue rub against his cheek. When Mary was still he carefully combed his fingers across her scalp, keeping his touch light, and felt his pulse quicken when he found the spot again, just behind her left ear.

A hand closed around his and pulled it down to her breast. He smiled at her surly look and kissed her forehead. "Morning. Tea?"

"Coffee."

"Right. Breakfast?"

"Mm."

With one last ruffle of her hair - he really couldn't help it when it was shorter than his - John crawled out of bed and shuffled downstairs to the kitchen.

When John's footsteps had gone Mary sat up, tangled in the sheet.

Mary ran her hands over her face, her arms, her breast and navel and waist. She looked into the mirror hanging on the wall and stared at herself.

Mary's hair was growing out a dark auburn color.

Mary touched her face again, pulled back her eyelids, tugged at the hair that was now long enough to tickle her ears.

She felt like Mary. No longer was she just a girl with a dragon tattoo; she was a grown woman newly healed and newly in love, nearly twenty-eight years old. Never again did she want to hear the name Lisbeth Salander. It wasn't that she had changed, so much as everything around her had changed and she was adapting. There was no Erika Berger this time around, and Mary was determined to do things right.

Pulling on one of her boyfriend's jumpers along the way, Mary Morstan went downstairs to the smell of breakfast cooking on the stove.


	4. Chapter 4

Once it was established that they were in a relationship of sorts, John and Mary were largely left alone by all but their landlady, who couldn't seem to stop twittering about in a cloud of self-affirmation. Obviously, it had all been part of her master plan to get John to return to Baker Street.

"After all, you never could resist a pretty face," cooed Mrs. Hudson to John's embarrassment and Mary's barely-contained mix of jealousy and amusement. A deep-buried part of her had the urge to find all of those pretty faces and warn them never to come back. She tamped it down in favor of continuing to scroll down the web page she was searching for John's Christmas gift. She wanted him to have something just as meaningful as the Wall, but couldn't think of something good enough. Very briefly she contemplated telling him how her scars and tattoos came to be, but quashed that down quickly, as the truth behind the mystery would only depress him.

In the end she ordered him a new computer memory board with twice as much RAM as his old one, so he would have plenty of space to write up his cases with Holmes. He wanted to write a book, had talked about it in a hypothetical sense, that was both a recalling of his and Holmes' days on Baker Street and an investigation of what had really occurred between the detective and Moriarty. Along with the memory board Mary ordered several instructional books on writing prose and research techniques; if he had any trouble beyond that she could help, at least with the research.

On Christmas Eve she and John crawled into his bed, made love - that's what she had started calling it instead of mindless fucking; Christ she was in trouble - and fell quickly asleep.

She dreamt that it was snowing in Hedestad, and that heavy iron chains were frozen looped around her wrists and ankles. Niedermann, Bjurman, and Teleborian were pulling her along, making sure she couldn't escape despite the fact that if they dropped the chains she would have been trapped in place. Into Martin Vanger's basement they went like some macabre parade, where Vanger and Zalachenko were waiting, or what had remained of them after the flames. Zala's bottom jaw was gone, leaving his tongue to hang grotesquely, and at the sight of Mary he stepped eagerly forward. There was still an axe in his leg, and it crumpled uselessly beneath him with a crunch and squelch of blood, but he just used his knee as a foot and took another step with his good leg before falling down onto his bad in another crawling step. They chained her to the floor like Blomkvist and tied a noose around her neck and pulled at her clothes no matter how hard she fought, and-

"Mary! Mary, stop! It's me, Mary, it's Jo-!"

John was writhing beneath her, trying to pry her hands from his neck while hoarsely begging for his life. Salander was straddling his waist, arms ramrod straight and hands trying their damnedest to crush his windpipe with teeth gritted tight. Just as he was turning blue Mary came back to herself with the gasp of a half-drowned woman, and she pulled so far back that she fell right off the end of the bed and continued to scramble away in horror of what she'd nearly done. Heart pounding, the sound of John choking and retching scraping against the inside of her head, Mary propelled herself all the way downstairs and out into the snowy street wearing only her underwear and one of John's jumpers. Waves of pain rolled through her head and left side, and she started to shake just as John stumbled out the front door after her.

"Mary, it's okay," he hoarsely assured her, close enough to touch but making a point of not touching her, instead huddling against the cold and holding her jacket out toward her. "It's all right, love, it's happened to me way more than I'd like to admit. Please, just come back inside before you catch your death or freeze your toes off."

Mary felt her arms drop like lead to her sides without really feeling it, almost like it had been described to her instead by someone who had only ever seen it done in a film. There was a buzzing in her head that wouldn't go away, and when she opened her mouth to speak her words were slurred. "John, I...think...having s-toke."

There was an instant of stunned silence broken only by the howling wind - perfectly healthy 28-year-olds did not just have strokes, after all - before John asked, "Seriously, or are you just really upset?"

She shook her head, turned and reached back for him, but felt only the drag of wool against her fingers as she collapsed. 

* * *

><p>They spent Christmas morning in the A&amp;E while nurses took blood samples and did scans of her head. Mary had had a seizure, not a stroke; it hadn't even been that severe, but because of her past head trauma (which she called a terrible accident at a shooting club once she was able to speak coherently) the doctors wanted to make sure she didn't have permanent brain damage. Mary couldn't stop feeling horrible or apologizing for ruining a holiday that John obviously was very fond of. When she tried to make him leave while she waited for test results, to go spend time with the people he cared about, he closed his hand around hers and said, "That's what I'm doing right now." She'd been so overwhelmed she had to look away from him for several minutes before trying to speak again.<p>

Her doctor wouldn't stop staring at her thoughtfully every time he came to her room to check her vitals or take more blood. At first Mary thought that he was a creep, but when he idly commented on her dragon tattoo she realized her mistake in allowing John to take her in. Hospitals all around had probably been sent a picture of Salander when she went missing with a description of her injuries and a reminder that she would probably seek medical attention wherever she had fled. Not every woman lived after being shot in the head, and her tattoo was practically unique. Along with the paper-thin excuse she had for her gunshot wound, it was no wonder the doctor was staring. Mary's pulse started to race.

"John, close the door," she said when the doctor left the room. Befuddled, he did as she told him just as the doctor picked up a telephone in the hall. Mary leaped out of bed despite John's protests and started pulling on the clothes Mrs. Hudson had brought by. "We have to leave._ Now_."

He looked incredulous. "Mary, you've had a seizure, we can't just-"

With a final flourish, Mary zipped her jeans and pulled on her jacket. "John, for reasons I can't explain now the doctor is calling Interpol to have me deported and probably institutionalized for life. Trust me. We need to _go_, and _quickly_."

John thought about her words for several moments longer than she liked before giving a curt nod and pulling out his mobile. "Mycroft, I need a favor," he sighed. "Can you black out security cameras inside and CCTV outside of Bart's for about twenty minutes? Cheers, mate. Merry Christmas." He hung up and took her hand. "Come on, let's get a move on." She couldn't believe he was going along with it, thought he would go mad and then watch her get arrested, but John Watson was endlessly full of surprises. She really must have had a good reason to love him after all.

They ran as far as they could go before Mary's hip started giving her trouble, then hailed a cab back to Baker Street. "Care to explain now?" asked John once they were inside the cab. Mary shook her head, casting a wary look at the driver. She continued her silence even as John kept up his curious litany. "Are you at least feeling better? I don't want you collapsing again."

Across the back seat she compulsively sought his hand with hers. "I'm fine."

Once they were back in 221 Baker Street Mary knew her vacation was over. She made at least one last try at diverting John's attention with their unopened Christmas gifts, but beyond the time it took to make two mugs of tea he could not be distracted. They held their tea close and sat across from one another in the armchairs in John's sitting room.

Mary hugged the Union Jack cushion to her chest and explained, in as brief terms possible, that she had been framed for a crime she didn't commit. John tried to ask why she didn't stand trial if she was certain of her innocence, but Mary was so enraged by the original circumstances that she could only touch on how the media had used what little details they could get on her to turn her into a psychopathic lesbian Satanist. She had to stick her foot in John's groin to stop him laughing at the thought.

When she finished talking her throat was sore and she was exhausted. John looked grimly contemplative. "You really didn't do anything then?" he asked.

"Anything I did was asked for," she replied, allowing her natural accent to show through. "I axed Zala after he shot me three times, and countless years of selling and abusing women. I wish I could know if he were alive only to finish him off if he is. Does that frighten you?" Her stare was daring him to challenge her, to try to fix her, but he quietly accepted her severity with a nod and got up to crawl the length of the sofa, pulling her down with him.

"I would want that too," he rumbled in her ear, and she buried her eyes in the soft wool of his jumper. How he could take the chaos of her past and soften it in such a way as mere understanding was unfathomable. "Nap then presents? It's been a long day."

"It's only two."

"I _know._"

She smiled crookedly and closed her eyes. 

* * *

><p>They woke at five-thirty, and for probably the first in a long time Mary felt excited that it was Christmas. Not only had she not had anyone in her life who cared enough to put thought into a gift, but beyond that she had never been so eager to give a gift since the winter after Hedestad. At John's suggestion they took their parcels down to Mrs. Hudson's flat, where they had dinner before exchanging gifts. John was predictably touched and thrilled by the addition for his computer and the books, Mrs. Hudson gladly declared at her new bracelet, and then it was Mary's turn.<p>

From Mrs. Hudson she was given a pair of hand-knitted arm warmers that matched the color of her hair. John got her a thick wool coat of mustard yellow. Did she really look so cold so often, or was there some problem with her flat the landlady hadn't told her about yet?

"I'm sorry it isn't very extravagant," John apologized later in his room. "Especially not compared to the memory space. I just saw it in a window and knew you had to have it, knew how lovely it would look with your hair. Will you try it on so I know it fits?"

She eagerly slipped it on to try, silk lining running smooth against her skin, and felt something small bump against her hip when she closed the front. Suddenly John was fascinated by the bedspread. Mary reached into the pocket and pulled out a small box clenched in white-knuckled fingers. Her heart immediately began to pound; if John was asking her to marry him she would not be able to say yes no matter how she loved him. Despite the leaps and bounds she'd made in learning to trust these new people in her new world, marriage was still something she couldn't find herself interested in.

When her hesitation became obvious, John turned bright red and finally looked up. "Oh, god, it's not - I mean if that's what you - I - Christ."

She finally opened the box and found a shining new key for flat 221B sitting at the bottom. It took all of her strength not to sigh in relief. As John explained that he knew it was a big step for them to take so soon after getting together but they practically lived together anyway, she unbuckled his belt.

After John had gone to sleep Mary checked the BBC website; it took a bit of searching but did find a mention of a possible Lisbeth Salander sighting in St. Bartholomew's hospital. She bit her lip and sat up until dawn thinking before going to sleep. She just had to keep her head down, and soon the press would doubt themselves and forget all about her. 

* * *

><p>She went with John to the cemetery on January sixth. Never before had she been so helpless as watching him weep for his lost friend, and knowing that anything she tried to say would be useless. She hadn't known Holmes, and she didn't know if he was in a better place. Maybe London was purgatory, and wherever they went next was Hell. Maybe there was nothing, more likely in Mary's opinion even if Salander hoped there was a Hell made especially for pigs like Bjurmann and Martin Vanger.<p>

John slept in her bed for the first time. 

* * *

><p>A beautiful thing about being a fugitive while being in love with John Watson was that he respected her and the things she had had to do to protect herself. That, and he was not afraid to box with her when she wanted to work on her coordination, which had been poor since her head injury. He'd taken a rudimentary course in upper school but had never pursued the sport, instead favoring rugby, but still remembered most of the steps. They went to a sporting goods store and bought gloves together on a rainy Tuesday night in March three weeks before Salander's twenty-eighth birthday. She hadn't mentioned the upcoming date, only because she hated making people pay attention to her. Instead, she asked John to help her get back into boxing.<p>

He didn't hold back like Paolo Ronaldo had at first when they trained together. John knew how strong she was, knew more of her secrets than she had ever revealed to anyone, and therefore knew that he didn't stand a chance as soon as they started sparring. The muscle memories came back just like riding her Kawasaki, and soon after pushing the furniture in her flat out of the way she and John were circling one another like birds, each of them just as clumsy and out of practice as the other.

They both got a few good jabs in, but Mary was obviously on better footing and faked exhaustion so John wouldn't be embarrassed by losing. That was another thing that had changed about her; were she sixteen and in the boxing club she would have done everything in her power to humiliate each one of those cocky assholes until they cried for their mothers. She licked the blood off of John's lip before letting him look at the cut above her right eyebrow. It was the most fun she'd had in ages.


	5. Chapter 5

On Salander's birthday Mary dyed her hair black without saying anything to John first. He was a bit put-out, had liked her red hair, but wasn't angry. Mary didn't know why she did it, really, other than she felt like she had to keep some part of her old self alive no matter how much she wished her past was gone. It was growing faster now, and the dye was temporary; it would be faded before they knew it. 

* * *

><p>Their first real fight was over the fucking graffiti. It wasn't that Mary didn't want John doing it, she didn't care what he did with his nights as long as he came back, but after a while John seemed to think she wanted to join him on his ventures. When she asked why she would possibly want to go running around the city painting the walls with the name of someone she never knew, while she could be sleeping no less, John went very quiet.<p>

"I thought you believed in him," he said sadly. "You made that mural for me."

She rose her eyes from the rug to give him a withering look. "Yeah, I made it for _you_, not because I give a damn about Sherlock fucking Holmes."

He had been too angry to speak to her for days. Mary was convinced it was over and moved her things back down to 221C, not giving John the chance to feel guilty about his silence and change his mind. She had only been telling the truth; she didn't care about Sherlock Holmes. What had happened to him was shit and the media were terrible, but it wasn't her battle to fight. She was finished worming her way into people's lives just for the sport of it. But she didn't want to be finished with John.

Once he'd had a few days to himself and a chance to cool off, John crept down to her flat and crawled into her bed like a scolded child. She pillowed her head on his stomach and fell asleep before he could muster an apology. 

* * *

><p>They knew it was meant to be when they were walking side by side one evening and sensed that someone was following them. Mary quietly told John and he tersely nodded.<p>

"Funny, I don't recognize them," he murmured.

She glanced from the corner of her eye. "That's because they're after me." They gripped hands and took a labyrinth of side-streets and fire escapes home. 

* * *

><p>By the time her hair was completely red again, Mary had made up her mind. Not only was the original Mary Morstan's passport expiring soon, but she was getting bored and wanted to get a job to fill up her days. If she could get into contact with Plague again he could help her falsify birth certificates and Social Security numbers; the very thought made Salander raise her head and sniff the air hopefully, but Mary quickly dismissed the idea. She had been gone from Stockholm for nearly a year, but that didn't mean the police weren't still looking for her, and they could have found her connection to Plague. She would just have to figure it out on her own, and figure it out she did.<p>

On the 14th of May, 2012, she became Mary Watson, and it hadn't just been because she needed the name change.

They spent a week in Sussex on a bee...farm? Mary didn't know what it was called, but she enjoyed herself more than she'd expected. Though they were far from wasps, the constant humming of the fat furry insects was almost hypnotizing, and watching them crawl lazily through John's hair and over her fingers was peaceful.

Several times before, during, and after their little ceremony, Mary had felt something so peculiar that it had nearly paralyzed her and left her frozen with an alarming look on her face for minutes at a time. It was a feeling that came unexpectedly and without any signs, creeping from her stomach right up into her chest to squeeze like a fist of God around her ribcage. She always had to stop and catch her breath and wipe her eyes as discreetly as possible, because she had never in her life experienced joy without it being mixed with bitterness or fear. Now it was undiluted and poured on her in its purest form, and she didn't know what to do with it. John had actually worried she was getting cold feet, she was so quietly lost in her own confused emotions the morning of the ceremony. She'd responded to his fear by leading the way into the magistrate's office with eyes blazing. She'd even worn a dress of her own volition, informal though the hastily-purchased garment had been.

It was still a battle in and of itself to freely tell John she loved him, but she liked to think that she showed him in other ways. The only things that worried her were their ages. John was nearing forty and Mary was twenty-eight. People were going to talk, but that wasn't what bothered her. John was a kind man reaching middle age with no family; it followed that he would likely want to have children, and Mary knew that even if her ideas of marriage had changed she did not want to bring a child with Salander's defects into the world. But that was far off, they were only newly married, and she quickly dismissed it from her mind.

When they returned to London John started brooding over his book more seriously than he had before. He still hadn't started, wasn't sure where to begin, so one night Mary sat over his shoulder and advised him to start from the end. There was no written record of Holmes' death outside of the mainstream media and mediocre blog posts, nothing from a witness or personal acquaintance, and she knew that the build-up to writing about his friend's death was what was keeping him from starting. Cut off the foot before allowing the infection to make it fall off.

Two weeks later he handed her his laptop to read what he had so far. She had never known Sherlock Holmes, had never cared to know him, but when she finished it was all she could do just to stare at the screen for minutes, continuously blinking away tears. There was no way Holmes could have been a fraud, not the way John wrote it, and she knew that despite his tendency to romanticize things John did not lie about what he knew or hoped to be the truth. He'd fucking gone and made her a believer. She pulled his paints out of the closet and tossed a can at him in way of critiquing his writing. He beamed, and they took the city by storm. 

* * *

><p>Things had been going well for her and for John after seven months of marriage, and she had a job working for the IT department at St. Bart's hospital. It was a far cry from the life she'd been leading in Stockholm, but with her and her husband's irregular nighttime forays into vandalism it was hard to be bored. Their message was spreading wider and faster than ever, especially after the "mysterious circumstances," where all the CCTV around BBC's London Headquarters blacked out for two hours, and when they came up again it was to find "DO NOT BELIEVE THE LIES. BELIEVE IN SHERLOCK HOLMES" painted boldly across the back of the building.<p>

Kalle fucking Blomkvist found her a year and a half after she fled Sweden. Mary was just lucky she was alone and far from Baker Street when she heard strains of irritable Swedish muttering and looked instinctively up. She took a deep breath and reminded herself that her hair was red now before continuing her perusal of the aisles at the Tesco. John had the flu and asked her to pick up some Lemsip for his throat. Blomkvist walked right past her and started snatching toiletries haphazardly off the shelf beside her. Part of her was pleased that she blended in so well and the other part wanted to corner the journalist and ask where she'd slipped up. Too late she remembered she wasn't wearing her coat inside and her vest quite plainly showed the scars and tattoos adorning her back, but she slowly took control of herself and didn't overreact. If she swung on her coat and ran from the shop it would draw more attention than simply pretending there was a draft and acting natural.

A cough behind her, and then Blomkvist whispered, "Sally?"

Every muscle in her body jumped to attention at the nickname but Mary kept her eyes trained on the boxes of Lemsip in her hands. Did John ask her to get Original or Wild Berry?

"Sally, it's me. It's Mikael."

"Yes, I know," she replied in their mother tongue, keeping her voice low. "I also don't care, so fuck off." She threw the Wild Berry back onto the shelf without a care and stalked to the front of the shop to pay. On the way up she texted John: _Going be late getting back. Don't worry._

_Whenever you say 'don't worry' it only gives me a reason to worry more. Be careful._

She smiled against herself, then looked up and scowled at Blomkvist. He was gaping at her as though having never seen anything quite like her before. "You're wearing a ring," he stated. "Is it real or part of some disguise?"

_I'll do what I damn well please._

"None of your business."

_Fine, fine. I love you, though._

She threw a few notes at the teller and strode out of the shop with Blomkvist on her tail, schooling her expression into neutrality. _I love you too, you idiot._

"I just thought you would want to know, it's only a matter of time before your name will be cleared," he told her. "I've almost got enough evidence against Zalachenko and Niedermann to prove that they were the ones behind all of the killings." When she didn't answer, he continued with, "Zala's dead, you know, but Niedermann's still on the run."

"Then tell me how to cover my tracks so he doesn't find me," she retorted. She had no strong feelings about Zalachenko's death other than satisfaction that the bastard had got what he deserved. Niedermann was going to be a problem, though; even if he wasn't too bright he was a fucking monster and nearly indestructible. The image of John crushed under the blond giant's hands came unbidden to her mind and she fought a grimace. She couldn't even pinpoint the time when she'd become so weak when it came to John, it had come on so slowly, but weak she was.

Mikael was watching her closely as she put her mobile away, with something hardened and concerned in his eyes. "I came on a whim, because I heard about the sighting of you at the hospital."

"Bullshit, that was a year ago."

No matter how she prodded at him, Blomkvist would not reveal how he'd found her, and she was so pissed that she stomped away and took a crazy route home with Blomkvist still trying to follow her. She double-locked the door behind her, knowing he was nearby, and ran up to 221B to bring John his Lemsip. Her hands shook, but she blamed it on the cold of winter. 

* * *

><p>Blomkvist came barreling from the block of flats across the street the moment she and John ventured outside almost a week later. Anger and nerves spiked in her gut; she'd thought he might have given up, but Kalle Blomkvist was relentless as ever. "Lisbeth, you don't need to hide here anymore!" he insisted while John gaped between the two of them with his mouth hanging open. Her husband knew that she spoke Swedish, but the sudden appearance of a foreigner had to be strange to him.<p>

"I don't want to talk to you," she told him in English before grabbing John's elbow and picking up their pace.

"What's going on, Mary?" asked John, looking over his shoulder at Blomkvist as they made their hasty retreat. "Who is that?

She shook her head and gripped his hand. "No one. He's no one."

Frustrated with crossing a continent with no result, Blomkvist ran after them until he was hovering over Mary's shoulder and then switched to English. "Fine, you want to play? I'll play, Lisbeth. Or is it Irene Nesser over here, huh? Still have your billions? Does Action Man know about that? How about Zala? Will you ever come back or are you going to start shooting out children now to finish the little picture of playing House?"

Salander grabbed Blomkvist by the collar of his coat and dragged him into the nearest alley, shoving him backwards into a wall with a snarl of rage. "_Don't you dare open your fucking mouth again!_" she screamed in his face, but he was still smirking even as she shook him and shoved him again and again into the brick.

"Welcome back, Lisbeth," he said, and Mary felt such disgust that she released him and staggered away. John caught her by the waist. She was shaking like a leaf, but still pulled John's gun from his belt, where he kept it always during the day like a security blanket, and put the barrel to Blomkvist's head. He swallowed and stopped smiling. "Keep an eye on the news, Fru Watson. I won't be bothering you again."

"What did he say?" asked John as soon as she had let Blomkvist go, tentatively taking his gun back from her white-knuckled grip. "You were both speaking Swedish at the end." Suddenly Mary felt ill, and didn't much want to go out anymore. Arms crossed tight over her chest she led the way home.

From that moment on she was glued to the television set, unable to tear herself away from the news for a moment with anxiety and guilt at war in her gut. Blomkvist's warning resonated through her mind at such speed and frequency that she worried she would have another seizure, but it had been nearly a year since the first with no warning signs at all so the worry quickly faded. But the BBC was never turned off anymore, much to John's consternation; he thought the news was depressing even though he religiously read every article to do with the war in Afghanistan every week.

Mary lost five pounds in the span of two weeks before John put his foot down. It was all well and good for someone his size to drop a bit of extra weight, but she had just gained enough to be under the 'anorexic' category again, and fell back into 'terminal cancer' while watching the news and fretting. Either she was going to get a hold of herself or her husband was going to tie her to a feeding tube. She was tempted to let him do the latter; then she wouldn't have to worry about it herself. But John had apparently been threatening her without any backbone to support it, so she glared and sighed her way through three full meals a day and her husband's examinations that unfortunately did _not_ lead to anything sexual. 

* * *

><p>Throughout the entire month of December there was no news pertaining Sweden, and on the 25th their Christmas was again interrupted by havoc when John and Mary woke up with the words "SHERLOCK LIVES" emblazoned across the front wall of 221 Baker Street. Neither of the Watsons had put it there, not had they ever considered that particular wording in their campaign. All that the saying "SHERLOCK LIVES" could do was incite conspiracy theories. Within an hour there were news and online reporters outside trying to get a statement about why the couple was making such a bold statement. Within three hours the street was being flooded with strangers who ushered away the reporters and cleaned away the mess. John and Mary spent half the day making tea for their silent allies.<p>

That evening John gave her a new mobile for Christmas and a packet of Swedish candies, and she told him she might be willing to try getting pregnant, if he just gave her time to adjust to the idea. She would never change her mind, of course, but hadn't had time to get him a real gift; the joy in his face made guilt stab at her conscience. She continued taking her pills in secret, but they threw out their condoms.


	6. Chapter 6

The news exploded in mid-February. Blomkvist had been good in his word that everything would come to light on Salander's innocence, but failed to mention that he was the one writing the expose that threw Salander under the "tragic victim" bus. It was revealed on the BBC that Lisbeth Salander was indeed innocent of the murders in Enskede, and that the real criminal was being pursued at that very moment. After the news and hour-long special program spelled out the entire story, starting with Lisbeth's tortured childhood, her years of wrongful institutionalization at the hands of Teleborian, and the gang-related conspiracies that followed her all her life. It even showed parts of the video she'd taken of Bjurmann raping her, though it was only the beginning of the video where he tied her up and blurred out the rest.

"Lisbeth Salander has been pushed aside and treated as mentally incompetent all her life," explained Blomkvist in an interview. "If you tried to explain to the authorities that you've just taken action that could save lives, and they locked you up for three years, would you trust them? I, personally, would have taken on the role of my own judge and jury too, were I in her position. Fröken Salander is innocent, and now it should be the task of Interpol to find Ronald Niedermann for the countless murders he's committed."

The special ended with an announcement that Salander was being offered an official pardon and apology by the Prime Minister of Sweden. Salander wanted Blomkvist's head on a plate. Mary put her head in her hands while John comfortingly rubbed her shoulders. 

* * *

><p>The search for Salander had been picked up again in the wake of the BBC report on her. Mary was glad that they were looking for a black-haired punk, rather than a quiet red-headed IT technician with a short temper, when she crawled into bed with John every night. He was worried about her, about how she was handling the pressure to hide, and she had to point out that hiding was exactly what she'd been doing for over three years. Keeping her head down was easy when she wanted it, and to stay with John she would do anything. Including, apparently, not replenishing her birth control pills.<p>

In the four or so many months that she'd been pretending to try getting pregnant in vain, John was plainly beginning to feel as though he were the one somehow letting her down. She would complain about cramps or buy tampons on one of their weekly forages to Tesco, and John's face would fall as though Christmas had been cancelled. She tried to assure him that it didn't matter, that she didn't mind, but the more worked up her husband became over the matter the more she began wondering if there really was something to be desired in having a child.

"Why does it matter so much to you if we have a baby?" she bluntly asked one day. "Would you stop loving me if I couldn't get pregnant?"

With a jilted shrug John settled on the sofa beside her and laced their hands together. "It's just - I don't know - one of those things that I've always though I would have someday. I'd begun to accept that it probably wouldn't happen while Sherlock was alive, but now... I don't know. I just want to be a dad, and I want to be a dad with you. It doesn't mean I won't love you, I didn't marry you just to have kids after all. But maybe it just wasn't in the cards." He kissed her head and turned on the telly with his foot, lying back with an arm around her shoulders and a repressed sigh hidden in the lines of his face.

That was when Mary started thinking about it more seriously. She closed her eyes at night and tried to imagine what it would be like to be a parent. It wasn't as though she and John couldn't afford a baby, but the responsibility of raising up a functional human being was daunting. Moral and mental defects were embedded right into Mary's genetic code. Her half-brother was a maniac. But she had had a good mother, and her sister was relatively normal, and John was as close to a perfect human being Mary believed anyone could get. Maybe the good genes would outweigh the bad. Or maybe they would have a son who hated women because Mary was such a hateful mother.

There was only one way they would know for certain, and so after four days of agonizing over the concept she threw out her pills via the toilet of 221C. It would take another few months for her biology to balance out properly, precious time for her to wrap her mind around the idea.

The news around Salander settled greatly over the ensuing weeks, and Mary felt her confidence gain a bit of a boost. Maybe they would give up on her and she could go gently back into her own business. She was promoted at her job to a management position, and John was offered a position as a medical consultant for Scotland Yard, which sounded mostly like a thinly-veiled excuse to give him a higher salary and have him around more often. The Detective Inspector came by to celebrate with them; he'd grown fond of Mary since intercepting the burglary at Baker Street nearly three years previous, and she found herself surprised by taking a liking to him as well. 

* * *

><p>Six weeks later when they had Lestrade by for an afternoon visit, Mary opted not to drink the beer that John passed around; she had a schooled neutral expression on her face that made cautious hope bloom in John's chest like the warmth of drink. He raised an eyebrow at her and she gave a strained smile in return. He was certain that Lestrade was able to pick up something about how John beamed, but the DI didn't ask. After six months of trying, they might finally have a family.<p>

Halfway through the evening John and Lestrade were each nursing a beer when Mary's mobile started ringing. She looked puzzled by the number on the display, and signaled to John and the DI as an apology before shuffling out. John thought he heard her say hello in Swedish as she closed the door to Sherlock's bedroom - they had talked about emptying it out briefly, but never did. Everything was organized and Sherlock's clothes were in storage, so they kept it as a guest room for guests who never came. At first, when John was starting staying nights again, it was in there where he'd slept rather than his own room. That was over now, though.

"So how are things here?" Lestrade asked once they were alone. "Heard from your landlady that you're trying for a baby."

John stiffened in his seat and furrowed his brow. "How-? Oh, never mind. Uh, yeah, it's nothing serious, but we've just sort of stopped trying _not_ to have a baby."

Grinning, Lestrade held out his bottle and John tapped the bases together. "Good luck. That why she's not drinking, then?"

"Suppose." John shifted slightly in his chair; he didn't really like talking about Mary when she was right in the other room. He knew she had a hard time trusting people, had experienced that lack of trust firsthand when they met and fell together like misshapen puzzle pieces, and didn't want her to fall back into her shell. "Hear about the big crime spree in France? Some mystery hero came swooped in and caught the bloke. Amazing."

They both sat in a long silence, obviously thinking of another mystery hero who spent far too much of his time "swooping" into other people's business. Though Lestrade could never confirm it for certain and never would, he could swear up and down that he ran into a masked and spray-paint-clad John and Mary Watson one night, while he was out doing his usual rounds. It was right on his way from the back alley near Kensington Station and the hardware store where Greg bought his paint.

Just when Lestrade was going to ask how John was coping, now that it had been over two years, Mary came stalking back out of the spare room with her phone clutched in one hand and her bag slung over her shoulder. "That was Erika, from work," she explained breezily enough to sound out of herself. "She needs me for some help programming a new piece of equipment. Shouldn't be long. I'll call when I get there." Without waiting for John to reply she leaned down and kissed his cheek before dashing out.

"She's been given a lot of responsibility," John explained after the door slammed downstairs. "Plus she and Erika are working on this new project, really hush-hush. I think they're trying to build a new kind of firewall or something, I dunno, all that computer-talk goes right over my head most of the time. She'll be up all night again and sleep straight through until dinner tomorrow."

There was a match on, so they turned on the telly and sat in relative silence, until John's phone started vibrating an hour after Mary left. John had forgotten her promise to let him know when she arrived at Bart's. He motioned for Lestrade to turn the volume down as he answered. "Yeah, love, everything okay?" It was immediately clear that there was something wrong when the only sound on the other end of the line was heavy breathing. He sat up straighter. "Mary? Mare, what's wrong?"

Lestrade looked up from the telly, already prepared for something catastrophic. After long moments Mary finally answered him. "John...I - not...home tonight."

John had to close his eyes against the onslaught of memories Mary's voice awoke in him. How many nights had he been woken up by Sherlock calling like this? "Mary, tell me what happened, where are you?"

"Don't know."

"Try to look around, where are you? Are you hurt?"

"Mm."

"What happened?"

Mary took a shaky breath. "Kicked. Stomach. Hard. Head too. Sides. Back. _Ow_..." she moaned the last, and the crunch of gravel signified that she was trying to move.

"Mare, don't try to get up. Just look around as best you can," he told her, jumping up from the sofa to get his jacket and keys. With a signal to Lestrade the DI was up as well, fetching his own things and calling Donovan.

"Wall."

"There's a wall? What's it look like?"

"John, fuck..._the Wall_."

His eyes widened and he looked up at Lestrade. "Corner of 8th and 15th, roughly. Call an ambulance. Mary, we're coming. Stay on with me, will you? Tell me what a bloody idiot I am in all the languages you know before I get there, or you get the shopping for the next month."

"No. John. No. Stay home. Trap."

"_I don't care_." 

* * *

><p>Good on his word, John's voice grated at Salander the whole time she lay at the base of that dirty wall. Several times she thought to just hang up, but once she'd tucked her hand under her head she was reluctant to move again for the pain.<p>

She'd known from the moment she answered the phone that she was walking right into a trap, that Niedermann would be waiting for her - of course that much was obvious when he greeted her with "Hello, little sister" - but Salander couldn't resist the opportunity to try getting even with the bastard. She hadn't even had the chance to get in two decent swings before Niedermann was kicking the shit out of her. It was like he knew the secret that Mary was trying to hide under her jumper, because the first place he aimed was her stomach with all his impressive strength. He didn't ever hit hard enough to outright kill her, at least not right away. Salander was certain the internal bleeding would have her gone before daybreak.

Niedermann finished his work on her and walked away like nothing while she writhed in pain on the ground. Before he'd gone, he'd told her that the moment John showed up to save her he would be dead as well. Mary had only intended to call her husband to get him to stay home, lock the doors and windows, but of course he had to come running to the rescue like damn Action Man. Of course he did, and she suspected that was but one of the many annoying things she loved about him.

By the time she became aware of the flashing blue lights nearing her periphery, Salander had managed to drag herself to the wall and prop herself upright against it. There was a loose board near her hand, and she held it in a loose fist in case Niedermann returned. Meanwhile, John and Lestrade were rushing toward her so quickly they might have been better off on all fours like lions or wolves. 

* * *

><p>"Mary, you weren't answering me!" panted John as he fell into a crouch beside his wife, feeling her pulse and assessing damage. Her mobile was where she'd been lying ten minutes ago, completely forgotten. She took a shuddering breath and tried to raise her head but only managed a fraction of it. All she'd been able to do while working herself upright was moan in incoherent pain. "God, I thought you were - and - Lestrade, check over there, I think I heard something."<p>

She clenched her jaw. "Trap. Go."

"Mare, we'll go as soon as the ambulance gets here," John gently admonished her, trying to find somewhere he could touch her but unable to spot an area not covered in blood or enormous bootprints. He finally found a spot on her jaw and tenderly placed two fingertips there, helping her to look into his eyes while Lestrade dug frantically in his car for a baton.

Just as he was approaching the area John indicated, Mary managed to grind out, "_fucking - giant_," between clenched teeth. John barely shouted a warning over his shoulder before Lestrade was being thrown halfway down the alley. He pulled the plank from Mary's hand and jumped to his feet, taking a wild swing at the alarmingly enormous man lumbering forth. The giant similar to the Golem was barely slowed even when John heard his nose break under the board in his hand. Perhaps he blinked, but it was only a momentary delay.

_No fucking way_, John thought to himself as the instinct to retreat warred with the need to protect Mary and Lestrade while he regained his footing. _No, it couldn't be_. He took another swing, and Lestrade swung his baton at the back of the blond's head; he toppled over, nearly landing on top of John, but he managed to shove the falling body away from both himself and Mary. "Come on," he said to the DI. "If my hunch is right, we haven't much time before he's back on his feet. Mare, can you get up?"

She tried - god, John saw how she tried with all the stubbornness and pride she'd had since the day he met her - but her body was too battered and abused to stand any more effort. Even though it was the last thing he was supposed to do with a potential spine injury, he picked Mary up into his arms and ran as carefully as he could away from the enormous man while Lestrade called for backup on his radio.

The ambulance caught up with them as the giant was coming to, blue lights blinding but such a welcome relief that John wanted to cry. Even four officers and a tranquilizer couldn't subdue the beast, and he vanished just as the ambulance was roaring Mary and John off for the hospital. 

* * *

><p>Mary woke up once in the night, after the emergency procedure to save her punctured lung but before the nurses' shift change, to find John curled against her side, fast asleep. She didn't know why she'd woken up until she felt warmth seeping into her arm where it hadn't been while she was sleeping. A tall figure stood over her and John, not as tall as Niedermann nor as broad, but Salander still couldn't help working up her addled mind for some sort of fight. Then the figure was gone, and Mary tucked her head into the crook of John's shoulder before falling back to sleep. She didn't remember the incident when morning came.<p> 


	7. Chapter 7

As the news erupted with Ronald Niedermann's face, Mary and John were advised to temporarily move into a hotel until he was found. It had somehow not been leaked that the woman Niedermann attacked used to be Lisbeth Salander, now disguised as an IT tech. John suspected Mycroft Holmes; Mary suspected a spot of good luck. Either way, despite John's strict military past and Salander's necessary habit of picking up and leaving everything at a moment's notice, they just had too much at Baker Street to leave without a few days' preparation. And once Mary was sitting or horizontal, it was literally an uphill battle for her to get up again. She'd come out of the attack with a concussion, three broken ribs (two cracked), a punctured lung, and a badly-sprained ankle. If she had been pregnant before her scuffle with Niedermann, she sincerely doubted she was any longer and had no interest in being so ever again.

Five days after returning home, with a rotating guard from both Scotland Yard and Mycroft's office watching over them, Mary woke up from a medication-induced nap to John shouting, "Would you quiet down! My wife is sleeping!"

She crawled stiffly out of bed and abstained from reaching for her crutch when another man replied in a low voice. For the moment she didn't want them to know she was awake, and leaned on the wall to limp to the door. Then she had to sit on the stairs and scoot her arse down each step at an agonizing pace while her ribs screamed in protest. To do that and hone her attention in on the conversation was taking all her energy.

"So you married, then?"

John sighed, and Mary could see him in her mind with one hand pinching the bridge of his nose. "_Yes_, I got married. It's not as though I was going to sit around and save myself for you."

"I never _wanted_ you to save yourself. I wanted you to move on and live your life the way it ought to have been - without me."

They were speaking like old lovers, John and this man, and Salander's thoughts wandered to Blomkvist and Erika Berger.

"Oh," John laughed bitterly, "_that's_ why you did it, is it? So I could live a good wholesome life free of crime? The only difference between then and now is that I'm on the other side of it. I've been committing petty felonies all over the city, have even dragged others into it."

The other man seemed to chew this over. "We could go back, you know," he said quietly. "Pick up where we left off. You'd like that, wouldn't you John?"

Mary felt a spike of burning trepidation in her gut; Salander was raising her hackles.

"Of _course_ I would like that," replied John after a long silence, his voice hushed and broken. Mary felt like someone had punched her. Again. "Of course I want to pick up, but _Christ_, Sherlock, I have-" He broke off when Mary couldn't muffle the choked gasp of shock that tore through her at the sound of Holmes' name.

John's footsteps padded lightly across the floor - no shoes - until he was looking down at her at the foot of the stairs, and then he knelt before her looking concerned and upset. His eyes were wet. "Mare, what're you doing out of bed? Are you okay? You should have shouted for me." Over his shoulder, Sherlock Holmes loomed like a vengeful spirit. He was dirty and rail-thin, wildly long hair curling in every direction. But he was alive, and that was most surprising of all.

He appraised her briefly before softly saying, "Lisbeth Salander. The Underworld has been screaming for your head for a very long time."

She had never outright told John her real name, nor had anyone else called her by it, and even though she was sure John had made the connection long ago he still looked taken aback. She merely leveled Holmes with a stare over John's shoulder. "I know they have. Now that you're back, I think it's time to give them what they want."

"What?" snapped her husband. She did not meet his eyes. "Those people who you've been running from for over two years, you're just going to hand yourself over to them?"

She shrugged. Salander was craving a cigarette after catching a whiff off of Holmes. "I might as well, now you have each other and I am extraneous." Deliberately she had allowed her accent to fall through, shedding Mary like a skin and pulling Salander back into place, even if she did fit a bit tighter now. She would not explain herself. She didn't need to, not to these people. Instead, using the wall again, Salander rose laboriously to her feet and limped to the door. She had to walk hunched over like an old lady to keep from stretching the bruises on her stomach.

"Mary, what the hell-?" stammered John, following and catching her in seconds.

"I want to sleep in 221C tonight," she said. "I'm sure you two want to be alone."

Brow furrowed, John made a strained sound as he took her shoulders carefully in his hands. "Mary, you can't _possibly_ think that just because Sherlock's come back I won't-"

"My name isn't Mary, John," she rose her voice. "My name is Lisbeth Salander. I am a fugitive. I came here looking for a place to hide, even after the government pardoned me. I needed to change my name, and you provided an excuse. You were driven to distraction by loving me, and because of that you protected and defended me. _I never loved y-_"

"_Bullshit!_" shouted John. "No one could fake what we had, what we _still have_, Mary!"

"How could you know? How could you possibly know?"

John leaned nearer until their faces were inches apart. "_Because you're crying_."

With her free hand Mary swiped away the offending tears without breaking her stare with Watson. "Let go of me," she demanded. "I don't want to be around you now."

For long moments Watson stared into her face, then something seemed to give and he released her with a resigned sigh. "Fine. Fine. But just...please, don't leave or do something stupid. We're going to talk about this tomorrow, yeah?"

Salander nodded, and John let her go. She limped down the stairs, too proud for her crutch and too impatient to scoot on her arse. In 221B she heard John round on Holmes with a threatening, "And as for _you_..."

It was too easy for Salander to shoulder Mary's bag and slip out the door once the men's voices had risen to shouts. It was a warm night, and she was perfectly comfortable without shoes or a jacket.

There was no conceivable way for John to have hidden Holmes' survival from her, from the whole world. So he hadn't known, but if anything that would only cement him further to the man now that he had miraculously returned from the dead. Mary had lived with John for over two years, knew his habits, his secrets, the skeletons in his closet, and that meant she also knew exactly how he felt about Sherlock Holmes. And Sherlock Holmes would always take precedence over anyone else who tried to interfere with John's life. Sad, weak little Mary who couldn't even hold her own in a fight anymore was no match for him, just as Salander had nothing on Erika Berger.

Mary wandered out into the fading twilight without particular aim or destination. Her feet ached on the pavement, or perhaps it was just her sprained ankle giving her trouble. But somewhere along the way, somewhere dark and private where no one would ever find the evidence, Salander yanked her into an alley, beat her, raped her, peeled off her skin, and by first sunlight Mary Watson was left for dead. 

* * *

><p>John knew from the moment he woke up that something was off, aside from his wife not being in bed with him and Sherlock rising from the dead. Pushing off the blankets he shivered, not from cold but another rush of foreboding. There had been days like that in Afghanistan, where he woke up and just somehow knew one of his men was going to die. Without hesitation he tumbled down the stairs, ignoring Sherlock in the kitchen for the time being, all the way to 221C.<p>

The door was locked, and when he looked around he could plainly see that Mary's shoulder bag was gone from its hook by the door but her shoes - which usually she kicked off with wild abandon just inside rather than waiting to get upstairs - were placed neatly by the mat where Mrs. Hudson put them the night before. John scratched his head with thought, then used the spare key to get into 221C. "Mary? Are you awake?"

There was no rush of shock when the flat turned out empty, but John felt like something inside of him had snapped cleanly in two. He didn't want to have to choose between his best friend and the love of his life, but knew already that Mary was just vulnerable enough to need him to. It didn't take much for her to fall into herself; there were times when he lost her for days to her crippling insecurities, but she always found her way back in the end. Now, with Sherlock looming as a threat in her periphery, he feared she might be lost in her own labyrinth of a mind forever. In that one respect, she and Sherlock were far too similar.

He couldn't bring himself to panic, only because he would tear the city apart by the seams to find her if he did.

"As far as I can tell she left while we were arguing," said Sherlock from the bottom of the stairs. "There are no recent signs of life here, the notepad on the hall table had been rustled by the breeze when she opened the door; the pen was on the floor. Plus last night, when you paused for breath after calling me an insufferable bastard, I thought I heard the door creak."

"Why didn't you-?"

"Say anything?" Sherlock shrugged. "I knew you had a lot to get off your chest and would have only assumed I was trying to distract you from the 'real problem' if I brought it up. I had hoped, however, that I'd been mistaken and only heard the door to this flat. Obviously, I was wrong and should have risen the alarm sooner. I apologize. She must have outstanding qualities for you to have seen enough merit to marry her."

A little breathless in the wake of one of the drawling monologues he never thought he would hear again, John shook his head. "It...it's okay, Sherlock," he said. "You couldn't have known. She's done this before, gone off for a day to cool off after a fight; I'm just worried because she's hurt this time."

Sherlock nodded. "Shall we see Lestrade or my brother first about the matter?"

"Well, assuming Mycroft's known you were alive all along..."

"He, ah, didn't, actually. Doesn't? Doesn't, unless he's wired the flat," Sherlock grimaced.

Well aware of his own gaping, John pulled himself together with a shake of the head. "Well, he'll be pleased. Molly too, now I think of it. She's been away from London since you, er... Well she just moved back-"

"-two days ago," finished Sherlock cleanly. "I know. I was in the boot of her car."

"Wh-how-? Oh, never mind. So Molly's...?"

"She's been my only contact with London for over two years, yes. Every time she came around gossiping it was to bring information back to me at our hideout abroad. Surprisingly invaluable, our Molly." There was an oddly strained smile on his face that made John wonder, but it wasn't the time to ask about such things.

He clapped his hands bracingly. "Well, I think we ought to tell Mycroft first. If he catches sight of me on the CCTV it could lead to a very awkward confrontation." At John's nod he popped up the collar of his new and frankly lacking coat, and the pair smiled at one another despite John's nerves.


	8. Chapter 8

Mycroft was appropriately shocked to see his younger brother alive after nearly three years. The brothers looked as though they were in true physical pain as they regarded one another across Mycroft's office desk. Politely in his opinion, John turned away when he thought he saw an unusual shine in the elder Holmes' wide eyes, but did not excuse himself from the room only because Sherlock looked on the verge of bolting. Then John heard the soft sound of a chair creaking under Mycroft's weight - much lesser since his brother's death - as he stood up, footsteps charging around the desk, and finally Sherlock's surprised squeak as Mycroft threw gangly arms around him.

Even though their face-to-face contact had been limited since Sherlock's sham-death, Mycroft offered any help available to his position to keep an eye out for Mary. The politician seemed shaken and uneasy. John thanked him, and she and Sherlock left to give Scotland Yard a visit.

"I work there now, you know," he told Sherlock on the way. "Molly hadn't been by since, but I was offered a job and I took it. I'm a medical consultant now, sort of like forensic medicine. I just look over the bodies and help identify what killed them, how, and when. Not the most exciting thing, but it pays well." He kept his gaze forward, but felt his friend's pride like a shaft of sunlight. 

* * *

><p>Anderson screamed like a half-naked teenager in a horror flick and ran the moment he saw Sherlock, apparently either under the impression that Sherlock had finally returned to seek his spectral revenge or that he'd just woken up from a very long, pleasant dream to find it a nightmare. Donovan barged over from her office to see what the problem was and froze, looking like she was about to be ill. Once that passed she came dangerously close to bursting into tears but then determinedly hardened her features. "I only did my job," was her greeting to her long-dead enemy. "I didn't want it to be true if only for <em>his<em>-" nodding toward Lestrade's office, "-sake, but I had to be certain."

"I trust you received my note?" replied Sherlock without acknowledging her justification.

With a guilty glance at John she nodded and pulled out her mobile. "I've kept it saved, even when I got a new phone." She passed the mobile to Sherlock, who passed it to John. "Lestrade and I were the only ones, just as you asked."

_About to hit bottom, I think. I truly am sorry. All evidence you need is in my phone. I'll leave it for you, and with you best of luck. SH_

"I didn't know what it meant at first," Donovan confessed. "We searched your bod-belongings, your room on Baker Street, everywhere we could think that you might have stashed it, and didn't find it until some maintenance guy found it and turned it into Bart's lost and found a few days later. The recordings are still in the archives, but like I said, Lestrade and I were the only ones to listen to it."

"Good. Thank you, Sergeant Donovan."

"It's DI now, actually."

Sherlock looked like Christmas had come early. 

* * *

><p>Ever the picture of exasperation and barely-restricted martyrdom, Lestrade took one look at Sherlock in the door of his office, blinked, and leaned as far back in his chair as was allowed without falling. "Well, I'm glad I'm already sitting," he said as calm as ever. "Think I just had a bit of a wee, though. Embarrassing." After a moment's pause the three of them started laughing so hard tears streamed from their eyes and several officers peered in the windows to see if someone was being murdered.<p>

Once they'd calmed down a bit John felt immensely guilty; it didn't feel right to be happy when Mary was missing. Sherlock seemed to sense his trepidation and turned to the DI. "Look, John's wife is missing and there are two dangerous assassins out for everyone associated with me. Anything you can do?"

Still rubbing his eyes, Lestrade straightened slightly and looked at John. "Mary's been kidnapped?"

"Ah, sort of. She was angry with me and managed to sneak out. I won't be worried unless she doesn't come home tonight. She's resourceful," he shrugged, feeling a flush rise in his face. He felt like he was supposed to be more upset, more terrified for his poor fragile wife, but he'd seen her hold back from knocking him flat because she wanted to save his pride, and subdue two burglars with a cricket bat only five months after being shot in the head. Not to mention all the times she came home covered in scrapes and bruises without explanation.

Lestrade seemed to understand, and promised to give patrol officers a reference photograph in case they came across Mary. There was nothing more he could do unless John wanted to launch a full missing persons investigation, which he turned down only because it would enrage his wife and cause her never to trust him again. Sherlock engaged the DI in an intense discussion about a young military man who had been murdered a few days previous, and Moriarty's right hand man, before he and John left.

Before allowing himself to go back to Baker Street John checked all of his and Mary's preferred places around the city. There weren't many, mostly just cafes and pubs and Angelo's, and it was really unlikely they would find her eating in a cafe like nothing had happened. Probably she was in a hidey-hole half across the city, coming up with a plan of sorts or organizing her thoughts. John gave up the search after a few hours and retreated to Baker Street, hoping that he would find Mary in bed. She wasn't there.

Four days went by with the same regular checks of the routine places, and finally John could fight the fear any longer. He rose the alarm, search parties went out, posters were put up all around of pictures of Mary on their honeymoon, and a bulletin was put out on the news. Red hair, fair skin, dark hazel eyes, limping, hurt, vulnerable, prone to high temper, pierced ears, and a tattoo. A huge fucking dragon tattoo slapped across her back.

Meanwhile, he and Sherlock were getting to know one another again. Sherlock told him brief stories of his time abroad, revealing the message left for Donovan and Lestrade to be his and Moriarty's conversation, explaining who had helped him when and why and how. He had not, as a matter or fact, been the one to paint SHERLOCK LIVES across the front of their home, though he never said it hadn't been Molly.

It was completely mad, John's life was. In losing his best friend he gained his wife, but once he got his best friend back with every explanation he'd been praying for over the past two years his wife vanished. He started sleeping in Mary's old bed in 221C, hoping that somehow she would come back for something and he would be waiting. He stared at the damp-spotted ceiling each night and felt a dragging empty hole contract in his chest. His wife was gone, and he was so afraid that she was hurt or kidnapped or just sitting somewhere hoping for him to find her. But his best friend was alive, and that was the most brilliant feeling. 

* * *

><p>Salander winced when the window to 221C's bathroom squeaked in its frame, but quickly opened it the rest of the way before slipping inside. The scrapes on her neck and back pulled uncomfortably; the blood had only just started to congeal. Two weeks had brought about very little change in her search for Niedermann other than the fact that she was on the mend from his last attack on her.<p>

She'd had to buy supplies, of course, a computer and new software and clothes. After a pit-stop at a dark corner shop she was back in her piercings and black hair. She cut it herself when she got back to her hotel. Enough time had passed since Salander had been spotted in Bart's that the press had blown over and forgotten her. They were searching for Mary now.

Getting back into contact with Plague had been almost a joy. The familiar feeling of tapping into the old databases, still able to recall the passwords and key-codes, had sung through her bones. Plague's reaction to her greeting had been one she could clearly see in her mind's eye.

_Hello, Plague._

_Who is this?_

_I think you know._

_Wasp?_

_..._

_FUCK._

But even after her death, Mary was persistently sentimental. Salander was attacked by dreams of John, dreams of Sussex and the hum of honeybees as they crawled through her hair. The image of her coat, the yellow one she'd worn to the point of fraying at the edges, the one John loved to see her wear, that image kept rising up in her mind's eye. She needed it, even just to burn it so the temptation was gone, to cast Mary away. Maybe she would even leave the ashes on the doorstep. The last she'd seen the bloody thing was in 221C, where she and John kept their heavy winter clothes for storage. She just hoped he wasn't getting a jump on it this year and had brought it all up.

On the way there Salander was tailed halfway by a man she didn't recognize, and then hit by some shit on a bike, leaving her shins bruised and back cut up in an ugly way that was only concerning because of the dirty pavement. 221 Baker Street was dark and silent but for the bathroom window. Holmes' dark hair was faint but distinguishable in the shower; she would have a chance to clean up as long as he kept up with the long showers John had complained about.

So she slid inside, pulled off her clothes and turned on the shower, crouching as the adrenaline faded and letting her head clear. Eyes closed, she breathed slow and deep against the faint sting in her shoulders. 

* * *

><p>John woke in the night to the sound of the water turning on nearby. He knew Sherlock was having one of his endless thought-showers upstairs, had fallen asleep to the sound of water in the pipes, but he knew how the downstairs piped banged and clanged no matter how much tinkering Mrs. Hudson had done. He jolted upright and crawled stealthily out of bed, following the sound to the bathroom. A dark figure was crouched in the bathtub under the shower; he flicked on the light. The black haphazardly-cut hair only threw John's focus for a moment before he was staring at his wife through the spray. "Are you ready to come home now, Mary?"<p>

Through streaming water she stared at him with black eyes. "I'm not Mary any longer," she replied.

"Bullshit."

She looked away to stare at the toilet tank. "It's true. Mary's dead. I'll only hurt you. You're better off not trying."

Without flinching or betraying that he was in the least bit phased, John pulled a towel off the rack and held it out to her before shutting off the water. "Should I be worried about the blood?" he asked, watching pink rivulets streaming down her back and legs. She shook her head and wrapped herself in the ratty old towel that she'd had and abused in 221C since arriving in London. Rising from her crouch at the bottom of the tub, Salander's legs shook slightly, and John put a hand on her arm. Like back when she was taking her walks and had trouble on the stairs, he wasn't going to help her all the way but only stabilize her. He was good at that, at caring for Mary while saving Salander's pride.

Mary didn't run once she was out of the bathroom, only because she was still naked and a bit shaky. She and John sat with their backs facing one another on opposite sides of the bed. John didn't want to look her in the face or it might break him. "Why did you leave, that night?" he asked.

"Can I smoke?"

He swallowed thickly. "Fine, if you answer me."

"I left because I wanted to."

"Bullshit."

"Then I left because Holmes is here."

"What, you think he's going to replace you? He's my best friend, but you're my wife."

"_Was_ your wife."

"I didn't sign any divorce papers."

She sighed loudly through the nose, got up from the bed with a creak of springs, and retrieved a pack of cigarettes and lighter from her jacket. "If I hadn't left Niedermann would have found you by now. And killed you," she perfunctorily explained. The accent that she had felt comfortable enough letting out in privacy was now thrust at him with abandon. John had to take a deep breath to steady himself.

"I do have a gun, you know. I was in the army. I can defend myself."

"Fucking hell," Mary breathed frustratedly, dropping back into her place on the bed. They hadn't looked at one another once since the conversation started. "I'm not a person you should want to be with. I'm dangerous, I've killed people."

"_I don't care!_" shouted John, having reached his breaking point much sooner than he had anticipated. Mary flinched slightly on the bed. "I don't care who you are, or what you've done, or whatever it is you think you have to do now; I don't care! It doesn't matter that you think you have to change to protect me, because to me you're _always_ going to be Mary from 221C. You will always be that skinny, frightening woman who tried so hard to hate me for being concerned, who spray-painted a mural for me, who spent a week with me in Sussex on our honeymoon, and stares at her own tits in the mirror, and isn't afraid to hit me when I'm being a dick, and tried to bake biscuits for Mrs. Hudson on her birthday and nearly burned the house down."

In the silence that fell after his little tirade, he heard Mary sniff quietly but otherwise have no outward reaction. He swallowed roughly and lowered his voice to a more reasonable level. "You can leave me, if that's what you want. You can walk away and be Lisbeth Salander again, and use that to justify the way you're treating everyone who's shown you even a shred of kindness in this city. But before you go, you need to know that I love you, every side of you, and that I will never, ever stop loving you." His voice broke on the last word. The bed shifted slightly under their weight.

"I don't know what to say," Mary finally murmured.

John shook his head and wiped at his eyes with a shaking hand. "You rarely do when I get like this," he sniffed. "I'm sorry."

In the dark of the bedroom, Mary's hand sought his. "I should know better by now."

"It's okay. It's okay, just...give me some warning time, if you're going to leave. I think I'd like to know first."

"I'm going to leave, John. I have to."

"No you don't, no you don't!" He tried and failed to keep the desperate whine out of his voice, feeling his face crumbling. "We can work this out, Mare. We can solve this. Sherlock, he isn't a threat to you! If anything, I think you two will get on great if you give it a chance. Please, let's just get through this whole mess with Niedermann and Sherlock's sniper - whoever he is - and see where we are then, okay? Please?"

She seemed to chew that over for a long time, so long that for a moment John thought she'd somehow managed to get up and go while he was talking. Then he felt the bed shift beneath her. "Okay. As soon as Niedermann's dead. I could give two fucks about whoever Holmes is looking for."

That made him laugh. Upstairs, Sherlock had got out of the shower and was puttering about with files and paperwork Lestrade had supplied. "John, I need you!" he shouted, accompanied by three quick stomps on the ceiling directly above John and Mary's - Lisbeth's? - heads.

"Do you mind if I take care of that?" he asked, fighting a grin but still holding Mary's hand. She shrugged impassively. "Will you come up with me?"

"Won't you be embarrassed with me looking like this?"

Tugging gently on her arm, John turned them both around to face each other. He looked at the new piercings in her eyebrow, nose, and lower lip, the water-smudged makeup under her eyes, how oddly her hair hung around her sharp features, and leaned across the distance to kiss her. "I love you, Mare," he whispered in the dark. "You will never embarrass me. Come on." Once she had tugged her clothes back on he pulled her carefully by the hand, not leading or dragging, upstairs to 221B where Sherlock was waiting.

His friend saw Mary and his eyebrows twitched. "Oh, you're back, then. Come look at this, you two, see if you spot a pattern." He threw a series of maps their way, and that was that. No fuss, no uproar. Mary let out a carefully-restrained sigh of relief.

After only five minutes of studying at least twelve London and Europe maps, Mary found the connection in the train routes. Sherlock's mouth twitched and he murmured something about photography. "What?"

"Nothing. Irrelevant. I'll be up a bit longer, but you lot can go to bed and we'll set out for the morgue in the morning. Luckily Molly managed to sweet-talk her old position back and has kept Adair's body set aside for me." Sherlock was doing that thing with his mouth again, the one that made John squint and look a bit longer than he knew was proper.

At John's hopeful inquiring look, Salander followed him upstairs to bed, but brought her computer with her. She, too, stayed up tapping away at the keyboard until it was obvious that John was trying to sleep, then slinked back down to the sitting room. Sherlock was still up as well, and wordlessly slid over a stack of papers to make space across him at the desk. "What needs to be done?" she asked.

"Some surveillance on Moran's hard drive would be excellent."

"I'll see what I can do, though I'll need access to his location if he uses a co-op modem like in a block of flats." With a quick rotation of her head, Salander's neck creaked and popped before she settled into the chair across from Holmes. "Can I smoke?"

"If you share."

They opened the window before lighting up, but there was a stiff breeze outside that only served to pushed the smoke back in and flutter Holmes' documents. "Why are we looking for Moran?"

"He's working with Niedermann. Or they're working together, rather," supplied Holmes on the tail-end of a drag. "Niedermann wants you, Moran wants me, they both know John is a link in our chair, so they've 'buddied up,' so to speak. Don't know why they haven't attacked yet." He leaned closer to his computer, squinting before pulling a pair of black-rimmed glasses from his breast pocket and pulling them on with a sideways look at Salander. "Don't tell John I'm using these."

She sniffed and rubbed her nose absently on her knee, not acknowledging his request. "Your brother's people and Scotland Yard have had a rotating guard stationed up and down the street since Nidermann attacked me, a few days before you came back. The resources might be scattered thin now that they're all out searching for Mary, but even though Niedermann's an enormous idiot he would never attack knowing that there are people with guns nearby."

Holmes nodded passively. "We'll need to get them out to get Moran in, then. 'If you build it, they will come.'" He used a dark ominous voice on the last, and Salander smiled crookedly. "Go to bed, Lisbeth. I'm finished for the night." He snapped his laptop shut and vanished into the spare bedroom - his bedroom. Salander briefly considered leaving, going back to the hotel where she'd been staying, but dismissed it. She shut down her Powerbook and went upstairs, crawling between the sheets beside John. He murmured wordlessly in his sleep and wrapped an arm around her waist.


	9. Chapter 9

When morning came John rose early and started breakfast. He had a bad feeling about Mary slipping out of bed late last night, like she and Sherlock were planning something that they had no intention of telling him about. The last time that had happened, he'd spent two years grieving a death that had never actually occurred. If Mary was going to fake her own death to become Lisbeth Salander again he would like to know about it, thanks. He understood, to some degree, about wanting to clear herself and start anew once Niedermann was dead, but he didn't want to go the rest of his life thinking she was rotting in a hole. He'd rather go thinking that she was alive and well somewhere far off.

Mary stumbled down the steps half an hour after him, having changed clothes out of the wardrobe. She looked intensely uncomfortable in Mary's clothes, and for the first time John began wondering if perhaps it had all been an act after all. Was it possible to spend two and a half years pretending to be someone else with only minor breaks? Though he had never known Lisbeth, didn't know the depths of her character and therefore didn't know when the woman he loved had allowed herself to blur the lines.

"Do you want me to call you Lisbeth now?" he asked over his shoulder. He took two mugs of tea off the countertop and gave one to...her. She was wearing a baggy gray t-shirt - one of John's - and Mary's favorite jeans. It was just ambiguous enough for her to look like a shadow of Mary, but the black hair and new piercings tossed her over the edge into a woman John didn't recognize anymore.

She shrugged and took a long sip of tea. "Doesn't really matter, I suppose. I'm not Mary anymore, but I'll still know what you mean."

Sighing, he put down his mug and rubbed a weary hand across his face. "Right, that cleared it up. Thanks so much." She huffed a small smile, and it helped momentarily ease the tension.

"I think I'd like you to call me Lisbeth," she finally said, staring at the table, "just for a while, to see how it...fits."

"Okay. To see how it fits. Can I call you Liz, if the urge strikes?" he asked. Lisbeth looked startled, but nodded after a moment of thought. John smiled, reaching across and gently touching her cheek. She stiffened, but John didn't see it as her withdrawing from him; Mary had been reticent to certain types of touch as well, it was just the angle or lighting or situation and he never dared ask. He drew away instead and she relaxed marginally.

With a yawn that resembled a lion roaring, Sherlock strode out of his bedroom clad only in his favorite sheets. "Sherlock, back inside and put on some trousers!" shouted John, but he was laughing. Even Lisbeth looked amused as the detective scowled and stalked back inside. Unexpectedly John felt a strike of pain right to his chest, and had to start blinking quite a lot and turn away to keep from embarrassing himself. After two years, nearly three, even something as trivial as refusing to wear his pants was something John had never thought he would see or hear about again. It was going to be odd, falling back into their old routine after all they'd been through in their time apart. The routine itself wouldn't be the same, not if Lisbeth decided to stay.

The day wiled away slowly as the three of them made their plan of attack. The only way they would be able to get Niedermann and Moran out of their hiding places would be to get rid of their guard. It was much easier, however, to get away from the guard on Baker Street rather than get the guard on Baker Street away from them. Lisbeth spent a few hours out of the house on her own, though with one phone call there were two plainclothes officers on her tail to keep an eye out and to keep Moran or Niedermann making a strike. She returned, with a smug look on her face, eight electric kettles, and a small packet of Rohypnol powder, and then spent the afternoon hunched over her Powerbook with Sherlock watching over her shoulder. It was odd to see them working together.

"How do you remember all of that?" he asked abruptly. "All of those codes and passwords? Even I would have to write down some of this."

Without looking up, Lisbeth tapped the side of her head. "I'm a freak of nature with a genetic defect." That made Sherlock blink and furrow his brow, but after a moment he shrugged it off and closed her laptop. "Hey!"

"It's time to go."

They busied themselves making copious amounts of tea in the new kettles, dozens of cups of the stuff until Lisbeth looked ready to vomit at the smell. John took a carefully-balanced tray along with his companions, and with big cheery smiles on their faces went out into the street and handed out mugs to every member of their guard, warning them to "Wait a few minutes for it to cool; it's still quite hot." It gave them enough time to get tea to all of them, so none would notice their compatriots before they drank their own.

Once the cups had been distributed they waited five minutes, then went and checked all of the guards were in a concealed location before turning them into recovery position. With John's Browning, Lisbeth's P-83 and Taser, and Sherlock's Colt, they set off in the fading twilight. With her research under her belt it had only taken Lisbeth two hours to find Moran and Niedermann's hideout. But hopefully, without any plainclothes following them, they would come out sooner. 

* * *

><p>Salander felt like she was going to vomit. She blamed the tea, so much of it in one day. And the cigarette the night before probably didn't help either; she hadn't had one in over two years and it had felt good enough to practically be sinful. But now she just felt faintly ill as they trekked off in search of Niedermann. This was it; she was going to kill him, though that wasn't what made her so nervous. It wasn't as though she had never tried to kill anyone before.<p>

It hit her halfway to their destination. She didn't dare say anything about it and kept walking.

"I feel like I have a fat red target on my back in this coat," she muttered darkly, tugging on the yellow wool.

John inclined his head slightly toward her. "It never bothered you before."

"Well I wasn't Lisbeth fucking Salander before."

He considered it a moment and then nodded as though she made perfect sense.

They were nearly there when John stiffened and murmured, "Four o' clock, four o' clock, four o' clock." One at a time they glanced over their shoulders and saw the strong-statured man following them at a short distance.

"Moran," supplied Sherlock. "He mainly works as a sniper, but is still adequately trained in hand-to-hand combat."

Salander wasn't worried about that; one buzz with her Taser and he would be out of the running. It was Niedermann she was fixating on. It was almost like she could feel her eyes growing darker with all the pent-up rage she was holding inside of her. When in the past violence was a means to an end, this time Salander knew that she would enjoy watching the life leave Niedermann's eyes. If she didn't get the pleasure of killing her father even after two attempts, then she would get her brother as a consolation prize.

Picking up their pace slightly, the three of them turned a corner and nearly walked straight into Niedermann's hulking form. A smile curled his lip as he narrowed his eyes at Lisbeth; she grabbed John and Sherlock's sleeves and yanked them as hard as she possibly could into another side-street. Her heart started pounding at a thousand miles an hour, but she kept running with the men's jackets tight in her grip.

"Thought the point was to stop them, not run as soon as we see them," grunted Sherlock breathlessly. Salander made a disgusted noise and shoved both of them away before leaning against the opposite wall and vomiting in the trash. Every part of her was shaking as if she were trying to vibrate right out of her own skin.

Immediately John's hands were around her arms, steadying but not supporting, and he pressed a hand to her clammy brow. "Okay? Lisbeth, you all right?"

She roughly wiped the bile away with the back of her hand and glared. "I blame you for this," she said. At his bewildered look she shook her head and turned away. "I was never like this, I wasn't scared! But you, and your stupid...and I..." She scowled and spat once more into the muck of her own sick while John defensively threw up his hands. Holmes was staring at her suspiciously. 

* * *

><p>They had barely paused in the alley for two minutes while John's wife was being ill - Sherlock catalogued her physical state and outward appearance for later - when Niedermann ploughed around the corner. He really did seem like a giant up close; Sherlock hadn't had the chance to get a good look until that moment. With what little research he could do with information that was available on the German, he'd gathered that he suffered a genetic deficiency called congenital analgesia, something that could either work tremendously in their favor or very hard against them.<p>

Sherlock was the first to draw his gun only because John was distracted by Salander's illness, but within moments the two of them had seen his movement and joined in. With three guns trained on them it would be difficult for Niedermann to escape alive, even if he couldn't feel pain, and hopefully the enormous idiot knew that much.

Niedermann smiled a slow and stupid-looking smile at Salander and said something to her in Swedish as he raised his hands above his head. Sherlock had picked up rudimentary Swedish in his time abroad, and was able to pick up the words _Sister, English,_ and _whore_. Salander readjusted the grip on her gun but otherwise didn't react. Niedermann (her brother? That hadn't been in the research; perhaps a grammatical mistake that Sherlock hadn't picked up on) said something else involving the words _gun_ and _down_.

"What's he saying?" asked John tightly.

Her face was paling, Sherlock noted as Salander shook her head at her husband, and hoped that she wasn't about to faint or something equally annoying. After all the stories he'd heard about Lisbeth Salander, the girl who wouldn't die, the ones that had grown nearly into legend or myth among the underbelly of Europe, to see that legend filled in with this scrawny skinny woman who hid behind tattoos and piercings, one who had been softened and made vulnerable by love - _the most dangerous disadvantage_ - for John, was disappointing. He knew from firsthand experience that loving John Watson - though in a different way - could be either the bravest or most ridiculous thing anyone could do.

She muttered something back at Niedermann, who merely continued to grin crookedly. He said something into the wire hanging from his ear about a _soldier_ and Salander's gun hit the ground as she shouted _no!_ over and over again. Even though he and John couldn't understand what was being said, the urgency and volume picked up their heart rates and put them on edge. "Put them down!" she shouted, accent coming through heavier under strain. "_Put your fucking guns down!_"

Only because John had never heard his wife so panicked before, he did as he was told, and Sherlock followed suit because he in turn had never seen John so unsettled. Sherlock knew that look of panic in Salander's eyes: Moran had a gun aimed at John's head. Niedermann smiled and beckoned Salander nearer to him. In the back of her jeans Sherlock could clearly see her Taser, saw John feign putting a comforting hand on her back, slip the weapon into his jacket sleeve before she stepped toward him. There was only a moment's window of opportunity for either of them to strike before John would be dead on the ground. There was an eerie anticlimax to the anxiety drumming in Sherlock's chest.

Niedermann wrapped a hand around Salander's neck, and John jumped with the speed an agility of a soldier half his age. The shot rang out, missed vital organs by centimeters, but still hit flesh. John flew forward, gripped the giant tight, and jammed the Taser right into his chest over his heart and turned it on while kicking Salander out of range. Sherlock didn't know where to look, only because he knew that Salander had had the Taser charging all night in order to use its full strength on Niedermann, knew that if John didn't break contact with him he would be fried in moments, but also had to track down Moran.

"Up there!" shouted Salander, who had apparently traced the bullet's trajectory in seconds and pinpointed what window in which building Moran was hiding behind. Even so, Sherlock was reluctant to move; he could hear the electric buzzing, smell smoke in the air, knew that John was killing himself. Salander dove to the alley floor and grabbed her P-83 and shot Niedermann in the head, then kicked at John's hand until the Taser switched off. "_Go, you fucking idiot!_" she screamed at him before leaning down to inspect her husband.

He threw his mobile at her. "Call an ambulance and DI Lestrade. If I'm not back in five minutes..." Not waiting to see if John was still alive Sherlock ran; if he lost Moran now there wouldn't be another chance, everything he had worked for in the past thirty months would be wasted, and John would die anyway. With his gun held tight he vaulted himself into the empty building and up the stairs, adrenaline racing like a wild horse through his veins.

Passing a landing at lightning-speed, Sherlock didn't notice the figure in the shadows until he was being shot in the back halfway up the next flight. He was too shocked even to scream as he fell. The bastard had stopped halfway down and waited with the full knowledge that Sherlock would come after him.

Forcing himself to sound as though he were on death's door was easy with a pool of blood steadily forming on the steps beneath him. Moran stepped slowly nearer; Sherlock could hear him chuckling darkly under his smoky breath. He preferred Arabian cigarettes, the kind John smelled like after a night out with his army friends. If the sniper had his way Sherlock's death would be slow agony: a fitting revenge for his beloved boss' demise.

With one steel-toe boot Moran slowly flipped Sherlock over onto his back. With pain screaming through every cell Sherlock tilted the gun at his hip and shot blindly. It was pure dumb lick that he got Moran in his shooting arm, even if it was mostly a graze. The sniper shrieked with pain, and Sherlock took the chance to shoot him, with steadier aim, in the neck. Alright, so not as steady as he'd hoped, but Moran fell like a sack of stones to the bottom of the stairs; he gurgled on blood for a few moments and then was gone.

Sherlock deliriously wondered if this was how God was meant to have felt after the Great Flood. Although the deed had been done and the evil cast out, he knew already that the problem would never truly be gone, his Work never done. There would always be another psychopath waiting to take the reins.

With that oddly comforting thought, he emptied the chamber of his gun in Moran's general direction - to attract attention, not because his subconscious kept conjuring images of the man rising from the dead just as he had himself all those months ago - and lost consciousness. 

* * *

><p>When the surgeons put John under to knife the bullet out of his calf, he dreamt that Lisbeth was a crane standing over him in the operating theatre. Her hair was black and spiked up into a bedraggled feather comb. Tall, taller than in waking hours, prehistoric, predatory, she watched over him with glittering black eyes the drilled right into him. She struck a lithe menacing figure against the harsh fluorescents, but all John was capable of feeling with her was safe. His crane wife was watching vigil over him.<p>

He woke up in the early hours of the morning, disoriented and dazed, to a nurse checking his vital signs. "Hi, John, welcome back. I'm your nurse, Susan," she said sweetly, helping him take a sip of water. "Now, don't try to talk yet, just nod yes or no. Can you see me all right? Hear me?" Slowly he nodded, muscles feeling like jelly, and she smiled. "Good. That's good. We were worried for a while; you took quite a shock. Do you feel some pain in your chest?" Again he nodded slowly, feeling the ache even as she mentioned it. "Your heart stopped for a few minutes. We had to jolt you back. You're very lucky."

That much was clear. It felt like Niedermann had jumped on him rather than getting an electric current through the chest. Before Susan could leave to continue her rounds, John made a noise in the back of his throat to get her to return. "Yes, John?"

He didn't know how to ask without speaking, so he took a deep breath and focused all of his energy on forming as concise a statement as possible. "M...Mawf," ended up coming out of his mouth, and he fought a sigh.

"It's alright, John, I have plenty of time. Don't rush yourself." To make her point, she sat down in the chair beside his bed and adopted a very patient smile.

"Mai...waife."

"Your wife?" echoed Susan. He nodded gratefully, exhausted by his own effort, and she frowned. "Well, a woman did call for the ambulance that fetched you, they said she was giving you CPR while the ambulance was on its way, but there was no one at the scene other than you and the dead man. You were covered with a woman's yellow coat. I think it's in the bio-hazard bins now. Sorry, John."

He shook his head to show her it was alright, and that was all he was able to do before falling back to sleep.

Molly Hooper was his first visitor when he was out of the ICU and able to speak more clearly. It still took ages longer than it should have, but if Molly was able to spend over two years with Sherlock bloody Holmes then she might as well be canonized for her patience. She looked older, but in a beautiful way that made her look like a woman rather than a girl playing dress-up. He grasped her hand tight and smiled at her as she confessed everything from helping Sherlock fake his death to nicking fifty cents from beside his mobile three years ago because she was short for a coffee.

"It's okay, Molly, you don't have to apologize," he whispered assuringly. She marginally relaxed, easing a bit back into her old self. "Moll, have y'seen my wife?" Every nurse on the rotation had heard this line and answered in the negative, but he was determined.

Frowning, she shook her head. "No, I've not had the chance yet. Lestrade's got some people out looking for her." She smiled again and covered his hand with hers. "I'm sure she'll turn up, though. Maybe hospitals make her nervous."

He nodded in agreement with a weak huff of laughter. "Hates them. So much. Runs away. Stitches herself. Dental floss. Mess." A yawn ripped through him. "Sorry."

"It's okay," Molly assured him. "I think I'll let you rest, just pop over and see Sherlock before I head home. He's two doors down, you know."

He gripped her hand when she tried to disentangle herself. "Molly...are you and Sherlock?" he asked.

A blush rocketed up her face almost immediately and she tugged her hand free. "Oh, John, if it were that simple," she laughed. "He missed you so much I think he forgot how to love anyone else. When we came back, he...well, he asked me to give him time to sort things out with you and the rest of the world. So I'm giving him time. I've hardly even seen him since we came home. I thought of giving him a limit, but it seems a bit cruel now he's been shot.

"I'm keeping occupied, though. I've got a wee dog named Gladstone, and I have my old job back, and a new bigger flat, and I-I'm just so _happy_, John. Oh, god, I'm so much happier than I ever was before. Everything was the same old routine, every hour of every day; Sherlock was the only thing that was ever changeable and completely unexpected. I'm such a better, stronger person now, and I think it's because I was trying so hard to fill your shoes. I kept asking myself, 'What would John do?' and then instead of getting scared - there was no time to be scared - I just...did it. All of it. And I'm so much braver now. Even if Sherlock does walk away, even if he decides he wants nothing more to do with me, I'll be okay with that. I-I'll be fine! I don't think I've ever felt so fine." There were tears sparkling in her eyes by the time she finished, and John felt completely gobsmacked. "Sorry, I didn't mean...I just had to _tell someone_, let it all out, you know? I'm sorry."

"Don't you dare," John grinned. "So happy for you, Moll. So grown up."

She beamed brighter than a star, and leaned down to kiss his forehead before leaving. John could hear her down the corridor chirping hello, and Sherlock's warm returning, "Molly!" It was probably the happiest he'd ever heard the detective around Molly. John desperately hoped it lasted. And he desperately hoped Lisbeth came to see him soon. 

* * *

><p>Salander got off the last train into Stockholm and kept her hood drawn up.<p>

**The End**


	10. Epilogue

The first place Salander went after returning to Sweden was the rehabilitation center where Holger Palmgren was living when she left. He was the only person in Sweden she cared to see, and when she showed the receptionist told her that he had died four months before. It hadn't been a stroke, at least, it had just been old age and very peaceful in his sleep. Salander left without another word, found an isolated place, and cried silently until her lungs ached, then waited as the tears dried on her face. Palmgren was the only person she had wanted to forgive her, the only one she wanted to know she was still alive.

"Excuse me, young lady?" She looked up to see a nurse from the center standing a few feet away. "You were here to see Herr Palmgren?" Swallowing the bitterness in her throat, Salander nodded. "Is your name Sally, by any chance? Herr Palmgren left me a letter for someone named Sally."

She deftly wiped the snot and tears from her face and nodded again. With shaking hands she opened the letter that consisted only of the line _I knew it all along._ A sharp laugh left her lips. She folded it over to find an address scribbled on the back. _For you. Do what is right._

Salander frowned and memorized the address before tucking the note away into her jacket pocket. "Thank you," she said to the nurse, and then took the next train back to Stockholm. There was no real reason for her to be there at all except the address burning a hole in her pocket. Part of her was curious and the other apprehensive. Palmgren was always trying to get her to _do what is right_ and teach her some sort of life lesson. She could guess that the address was either to a reporter, a lawyer, or perhaps someone that Palmgren thought could be a friend to her in the city. He was wrong to think she needed friends, though. Salander was happy on her own. Well. 

* * *

><p>The next afternoon she went to the address only because it was Palmgren's last wish for her. If it was a reporter or journalist she would tell them to piss off, and if it was someone Palmgren seriously thought would be good for her she would tell them to piss off. Then she could go home. Or find a new one. She had run away in such a hurry, like such a coward; it was Palmgren and his cerebral haemorrhage all over again.<p>

John had died under her hands in the wake of the electric shock. She had felt his heart stop beneath her fingers, and even after trying to give him CPR there had been nothing. Another man's blood was on her hands, and though the ones she had killed in the past had been evil sadistic pigs, John was good. He was so good. When the ambulance arrived she panicked and ran straight to the airport, blood on her clothes and all. With John dead, there was nothing left in London for her. The farther she got from him the less color there was in her world, until it felt as though the buildings were crumbling down right around her.

Her sister Camille was waiting in the apartment Palmgren had directed her to. She looked an awful lot like Mary Morstan had, but without the tattoos and much prettier. She had a rounder face and bluer eyes, ones that were currently wide with apprehension at the sight of Lisbeth on her doorstep. "An old man came looking for you," she said in lieu of greeting.

"I know."

"He said you might be dead."

Lisbeth spread her arms in a shrug. "Well, I'm not. Goodbye, Camille." She turned on her heel and made for the stairs, but her sister's voice called after her.

"Lisbeth, where were you? The whole country thought you were insane!"

"I _am_ insane."

"No you _aren't!_" The shock that went through Lisbeth's body nearly made her fall over. She turned to see Camille red-faced and embarrassed as she stepped out of her apartment. The sound of children playing followed her out into the corridor. "Lisbeth, you aren't a psychopath. You were _never_ a psychopath. People never bothered to ask what was going on in your head, that's all."

"You never asked either. You thought I was a freak."

"I was twelve!" protested her sister, looking almost desperately upset. "I didn't know any better, and you were my eccentric little sister. Of course I was going to call you bad names. You think I don't regret it now? You think I haven't been scared out of my mind these past three years, thinking first that someone had _really_ pushed you over the edge and then that you were dead or kidnapped or something? I thought I'd lost my chance to make things right!"

Lisbeth fought the urge to both laugh and hit the woman before her. "We're nearly thirty years old, Camille. Why haven't you ever tried before?"

"Because I knew you wouldn't believe me," answered Camille immediately. "Or - or maybe a part of me really did believe you'd gone off the deep-end, I don't know. But when that old guy showed up asking about you, I ended up asking more questions than he did. And then that news report, and the _Millennium_ article came out too, and all I could think was that I should have been with you through the things you've suffered...Lisbeth, I'm so sorry."

This was too much. Never in her life had Lisbeth entertained the notion of seeing her sister again at all, let alone having some sort of heartfelt reunion full of apologies and declarations of regret. But it was happening. Of course, she hadn't ever expected to let herself fall in love or get married either, let alone what came beyond all that. It seemed that a lot of things she hadn't expected or knew she wanted from her life tended to happen with age. Perhaps it was the small things that gave people wisdom. "Can I come in for a while?" she forced out.

Camille smiled and reached out her hand. "Of course, Lisbeth. Come and meet my family, and you must tell me everything about yourself. I want to hear it all in your voice rather than some reporter's." She was ushered into the tiny flat and immediately presented with two small boys of around three years. "These are my sons, Albert and Christer. Christer's the one with the freckle on his cheek, there. Seems like twins run in our family, huh? Say hello to Auntie Lisbeth, boys? Don't mind them, they're very shy. But come in, come in, I'll make coffee, please sit."

They sat across from one another at Camille's tiny kitchen table, Lisbeth guiltily sipping the strong coffee while her stomach rolled uncomfortably. "Where's their father?" she asked, nodding to where Albert and Christer were playing in the main room.

"We're divorced. He gets the boys every other weekend and for a full week in the summer. We're still on pretty good terms, considering everything. What about you? I know you've been gone for ages and obviously had other things on your mind, but did you ever find someone who understands you and loves you? I really want to know, Lisbeth."

She shrugged, staring into her coffee. "There really isn't anything to tell that won't sound like a bad line from a drama," she muttered, and Camille made a sympathetic noise. Lisbeth's sister looked very tired this close up; already she had crows' feet forming at the corners of her eyes. It didn't feel like they were sisters or had grown up in the same house; this felt oddly like sitting in the house of a stranger and having something more expected of her. Yet for some reason Lisbeth wasn't as bothered as she would ordinarily be, because she knew that Camille only expected so much because she was so eager for them to make amends. And Palmgren had been eager for that too.

Before Lisbeth could get up the nerve to speak Camille's phone started ringing, and she apologetically was inclined to answer in case it was related to her work at a small business a few miles away. Almost instantly Camille's brow furrowed as she listened, then replied in wobbly English, "I'm sorry, who are you?"

Even across the table Lisbeth could hear the man on the other end roaring, "_I need to speak with Lisbeth Salander!_" and knew exactly who it was.

"May I?" she implored, holding out her hand and pulling the receiver to her ear the moment it touched her fingers. "What do you want?"

"_Finally_," snapped Holmes. "I've been looking everywhere for you! I-"

"How did you get this number?" she demanded.

Holmes sighed. "You left your computer running, I found that Plague fellow I'd seen you chatting with in your contacts, paid him to find the information of any of your relations in Sweden, and _viola._ Now you need-"

"Don't call this number again. Don't bother my sister."

She was about to hand the phone back when Holmes shouted, "_John is alive!_" Immediately she had it up to her ear again and was demanding that he repeat himself, just to be sure. "John didn't die, Lisbeth! His heart stopped, yes, but the paramedics revived him. Oh, I'm alive too, in case you were wondering, _though I was shot;_ now get your deplorably_ thick_ skull back here before I find you and _drag you back by the fingernails with a pair of pliers!_ I refuse to stand by and watch John fall apart over someone as _obviously_ unworthy of his affection as _you!_"

Slowly, she replied, "Alright," and hung up the phone with Holmes' enraged ranting still squabbling out the earpiece. Camille was blinking bemusedly at her, wondering why an Englishman had found her telephone number to speak to Lisbeth. Suddenly everything felt a bit brighter. "I'm married," she blurted out. "I married a man in London named John. He's still in England while I sort things here. Also, I'm nine weeks pregnant."

As it happened, when Niedermann kicked her it had been significantly too high to cause much damage other than jostling to her pregnancy. She hadn't realized until the day they went out looking for Niedermann and Moran, and had been stubbornly ignoring her symptoms in the two weeks since then.

Oh, Lisbeth!" exclaimed Camille, looking like she wanted nothing more than to vault herself over the table and embrace her sister but also knew that their reunion was too new and fragile to do so. "I'm so happy for you! It's such a shame you're living in England, though; I'll hardly ever get to see you!"

The words felt odd forming in her mouth, but Lisbeth found herself saying them regardless. "We can keep in touch, Camille. I hope we do. I want things to be right between us."

"Me too," replied Camille instantly, gathering the courage to grasp Lisbeth's hand on top of the table. "When does your flight leave? You can stay here with us until you go."

"Tonight," she said, though in all honesty she hadn't arranged or even planned on going back to Britain until that moment. "Like I said, it was only a few days to get things in order. I kept putting this off. I'm sorry."

Her sister shrugged and smiled sadly. "I put it off for twelve years, didn't I?" she joked wryly. "I think you're allowed a bit of procrastination over a few days. Please keep in touch, okay? And keep me updated with your baby!"

"I will."

And, surprisingly enough, Lisbeth meant every word. 

* * *

><p>Salander made it back to London in record time, but didn't return to Baker Street right away. She wasn't sure how to approach the situation. Coming back to John after running away in a time of need was one thing; coming back to John after running away in a time of need and revealing that she had been pregnant the entire time might be unforgivable. She got a room in a hotel and brooded with both hands resting on her stomach. It was impossible for people who didn't know her to see, but she'd just barely started showing.<p>

"John?" She closed the front door behind her and edged her way inside, fiddling with her hat and looking around as though expecting someone to jump out at her from the shadows. 221C was shut up.

Mrs. Hudson appeared in the door of her flat. "He's not here, love," she said apologetically. "He and Sherlock are at physical therapy for the next few hours; I'm afraid you just missed them."

Her shoulders slumped slightly. "Okay. Thanks. I'll just..." With no ending to her sentence in mind she sank onto the bottom step to 221B like a stranger waiting to make an appointment.

The landlady waited a moment and then finally took pity on her. "Come on into mine, I'll make you a cuppa. You look like you've been dragged through the underbrush." Salander was too tired to do more than follow her; she'd been exhausted nonstop in the time since running from London, and knew that it was just a symptom of her condition.

"So, tell me where you've been, Mary," said Mrs. Hudson once she'd poured out the tea. "John's been very worried about you."

She stared down at her tea and bit her lip. "I know. I didn't mean to cause him pain. I thought he had died. I...I felt him die."

"Well you evidently felt wrong, because our John is alive and well as anything."

"I _know_," she insisted in a low voice. "I know. I was an idiot and I have a lot to make up for."

With a sympathetic smile the landlady reached across the table and patted her hand. "I understand, dear. I don't think he'll be angry for long, especially not with a baby on the way."

Lisbeth felt like she'd been kicked under the table. "How did you-?"

"Oh, I'm an old lady, dear; it's like we get a sixth sense sometime down the line."

She couldn't help smiling crookedly at that. They finished their tea in relative silence and Salander went upstairs with every intention of waiting like a scolded child for her punishment. Then she noticed the bins full of paint cans, the notepad crammed with messages from journalists looking for an interview, and a small mountain of letters and cards addressed to Sherlock Holmes. He'd made his miraculous reappearance, then.

An idea struck her when she put her bag down, one so idiotic and yet so clever that another crooked smile curled her lips. She pulled a few cans of paint from the bin and shook them experimentally to see which was the fullest, dug out two facial masks to double-up, and pulled her jacket back on. 

* * *

><p>Sherlock and John were sweating and glowing red as they packed up after their physical therapy session, complaining under their breath of aches and pains in their injured muscles. According to their respective therapists, both men were extraordinarily lucky to have caught their attacker by surprise or they would very likely have died. It didn't take a genius to figure that out; the evidence collected from the empty flat building had been sufficient to peg Moran as not only the murderer of countless cold cases but also a very skilled assassinsniper. They had escaped him three times.

Leaning heavily on his cane, John checked his phone for the dozenth time that day and probably the hundredth time that week. Sherlock fought a spike of anger toward Lisbeth Salander; she said she would return to London and stop this nonsense four days ago but still had not made contact with her husband. John was beginning to bridge the gap from denial and hope into anger, making his way subconsciously through the grieving process. Lisbeth had better show up soon or he would reach acceptance, and then his whole world would go pear-shaped again when she finally returned.

They took a cab back to Baker Street, too tired and sore to walk the distance. Sherlock texted Molly a few times. She didn't answer as quickly as she used to in the days before his "death" and it drove him mad trying to figure out what she was doing that was so much more pressing than answering her phone. She probably knew it too, and did it on purpose. It made Sherlock feel oddly proud of her; all the years he'd known her and tried to get her to assert herself in some way, take precedence, stand up to him just once, she never picked up on it. Then there had been the night in Brussels when he finally snapped and shouted at her, and she had spun around and shouted right back. She had a much stronger voice than she let on. It had been surprisingly easy to kiss her when she was finally honest with herself.

_Can I see you tonight? S_

_I might be busy. M_

_With what? S_

_Is it any of your business? M_

_You're doing this on purpose to antagonize me. S_

_I learned from the best. Pick me up at 8. M_

John was staring at him when he put away his mobile. "You're doing it again."

"Hm?"

"Smiling at your phone."

He looked out the window, being careful to keep his expression neutral. "There are finally things to smile about," he cryptically explained. John snorted.

"All right, lover-boy."

"How did you-?"

"You know my methods," John mocked him in an annoyingly good parody of his voice. Sherlock frowned. "Gossip, Sherlock. I have one of those faces people like to tell their secrets to, remember?"

He rolled his eyes and sighed, "Oh, Molly... It's nothing serious."

"Of course."

"A casual adult relationship."

"Naturally."

"We haven't had penetrative sex, though we have experimented with-"

"Digging yourself a hole, mate; stop while you're ahead."

"Right."

They sat in silence all the way back to Baker Street. Sherlock, looking mysteriously red in the face, bounded up the steps ahead of John - though what he really did couldn't quite be described as 'bounding' with a healing bullet-hole in his back. When he threw open the door John heard something metallic banging across the floor. His heart-rate picked up without him knowing why until Sherlock laboriously knelt down to fetch the fallen can with a note attached to it reading 'Find Me.'

It felt as though a balloon has just been inflated and then burst in John's chest. "I'm going for a walk," he announced, readjusting the grip on his cane and turning for the door.

Sherlock threw the can into the bin and eyed him suspiciously. "Why?"

"Oh, you know, I could use the exercise," he shrugged.

Scoffing, Sherlock retorted, "We've just been at physical therapy for two hours. What's the real reason?"

He pointed at the can with his cane. "I need to go and, ah, find something."

"Is this about Lisbeth?"

"No," John grinned with a shake of his head. "No, it's entirely to do with _Mary_."

"Who's Mary? John! I'm coming with you!"

They took off in what must have looked like the most unusual footrace in all of London, John hobbling off with a grin on his face and Sherlock crossly shuffling after him. John didn't even need to look up at the yellow arrows to know which way to turn his feet; it was an avenue he had walked so many times in recollection, sometimes with Lisbeth and sometimes not, that he could have done it in his sleep.

Turning the last corner felt like it took a decade, one of many that John had hopes for in the future, and to see Lisbeth there waiting with a nervous smile on her lips, to pull his arms around her, to brush her hair away from her eyes, to put his hands on her waist and feel the telling difference, to hear the words from her only made that hope grow something stronger, into belief. It was belief that had brought him there the first time, and belief would sustain them and keep them on the long road ahead.

"I'm sorry, John."

"It's alright, love."

"This doesn't mean I'm moving out, you know!"

"Bugger off, Sherlock!"

John leaned down to kiss his crane wife with a smile on his lips and the sun in his eyes; finally all felt right with the world once more.

**THE END FOR REAL THIS TIME**


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